All is Well
by Cerulean1
Summary: Jumping on the bandwagon. And we delve head first into ME1. There has been some concern about pairings: This will not be happily ever after for Shepard and Kaidan. This story, if I ever get there, will end up being Shepard/Jack. Lillith just likes to do what Lillith does best ;)
1. Overcome

**This deals with some touchy subjects, which, honestly, I glaze over for the sake of the STORY! I fall into some horrible fanfiction clichés in this, and you know what? I'm proud of them! So there :-p**

**Gravitation isn't done, not by a long shot, but I don't write well without deadlines, and y'all give me deadlines. And I really do want to finish this now that I've started it. Yeah.**

**On with the story!**

The sun was barely above the horizon, the grass at the bottom of the stairs still wet with morning dew. The tiny, quiet town was bustling with its normal early morning briskness. Farm hands walked in groups of twos and threes, chatting amiably about their wives and children, about the recent ball game, and about whether Mr. Henderson's crop would be ready before the fall festival. Children ran together toward the center of town, playing games as they raced toward the school yard. The air was brisk, but not cold.

Lillith sat on the step of the home she shared with her parents and her baby sister, Clara, who sat between her legs. Their school bags leaned against the railing, a datapad propped on Clara's knee. No matter how hard their parents tried to get her to do her homework the night before, Clara insisted on doing it in the minutes before class. At least she was young enough that most of her homework was really easy.

"You gonna marry Jack?" Clara asked, wincing as Lillith pulled her hair tight, braiding it flat against her skull.

"Ew, no. We just hang out and stuff." Jack Shaper was the son of one of the wealthiest farmers near them. They played pickup games of basketball on the weekends, but in truth their friendship was more a forced issue by their respective parents.

"But he's over all the time, and mom says you'd look sooo cute together. I bet you are. I bet you kiss him. On the mouth."

"As if," Lillith murmured, rolling her eyes. "Well, it doesn't matter now anyway, I'm only sixteen. Even if he was the cutest, sweetest, most amazing boy in the world nothing could happen for another two years anyway."

"Mom says it'd be good if you married him. That it would be...ser-a-dip-it-it-e-ous."

Lillith sighed, rolling her eyes again and snapping the rubber band on the bottom of her sister's braid. "Serendipitous? That's because if we got married, then we'd get access to their farmland. They have some of the best land this side of the capital."

"I'd join the alliance instead of marrying a boy," Clara said matter-of-factly. "Boy's are gross."

Lillith smiled and patted her sister on the shoulder. "Keep thinking that, kiddo. Come on, we're already late for school."

The sisters walked down the gravel road, shoes crunching in the silence of the morning. The streets were mostly empty now, the children at the school, the workers in the field. Had they been on time things might have been different. Had they been running a little later, things might have been different. As it was, they were still a half mile from the school when the ship landed in front of it. They were a half mile away when the screaming started. A half mile when the gun fire broke out. A half mile when they saw the head of one of the teachers in the yard explode in a halo of red. A half mile when the world seemed to end.

The air echoes with the sounds of people screaming, people dying. In seconds the air was filled with the stench of blood. It played out like a bad movie, and Lillith felt like she was moving through water. Her reactions seemed slow, but her breathing much too fast. She moved on instinct, fight or flight. With her sister there, it leaned heavily toward flight.

Lillith grabbed Clara's hand, dragging her back behind one of the prefabs and then shoving her beneath it. She crawled on her belly, sliding under with her. The ground is wet, cold. Lillth thinks it smells like springtime, and then thinks that is a stupid thing to think while they're being invaded. They needed to find their parents. That had to be step one. Clara was crying; desperate sobs that shook her entire body. Lillith tried to shush her. She had to stay calm, had to remain rational. They had trained for this. Sessions in school where they were told what to do if anything happened, but they'd usually only practiced for a wild-fire. No one really thought they'd be attacked.

She ran through the steps in her head, but they kept getting confused. She couldn't seem to think straight. The pieces refused to fall into the places she knew, logically, they were supposed to go. She thought she heard someone scream her name and that shook her enough to remember the drills for an outside invader. At least, she hoped it was the proper drill. She still wasn't sure. She wanted to continue to sit under the building until the screaming stopped, even though the mud was cold was oozing into her pants and up the back of her shirt.

The steps. There were three steps.

First, listen for the alarm. Second, get out of line of sight. Third, find an adult.

They were already out of view of anyone, but Clara was being loud enough to be heard even over the sound of the screams. Nothing Lillith tried kept her sister quiet for more than a moment. The air smelled like the barn during the fall slaughter, and only the fact that she'd grown up on a farm kept Lillith from gagging. The smell made her eyes water, though, just as it did when she helped her father in the stocks. Only that wasn't beef cattle. It wasn't pork. It was her friends. Her neighbors. She forced herself not to cry. It wouldn't do her, or her sister, any good if she started to cry. She felt the tears in her eyes though, and tried not to blink. There wasn't time for it. There wasn't time for any of it. She had to start moving again.

"Clara, Clara we have to move, okay. You have to be quiet. We have to find out why the alarm didn't sound, okay? Can you follow me quietly?"

Clara nodded, tears sliding down her cheeks. "I want mommy," she whispered. She was eight, but she sounded so much younger. Lillith was reminded of a very small baby, when she herself was Clara's age.

"I know. We're going to go find her. You have to be brave for me, okay? Come on, slide under here. Leave your bag. The alarm is in community center." Talking made it easier. Telling Clara what she was planning. Not that she had anything planned. She just wanted her mom. She wanted her mom so bad. As bad, if not more, that Clara did. She wanted her mother to tell her that it would all be okay. That it was all a bad dream. She wanted to wake up. The prefabs ended about fifty yards down, and it was a quarter-mile across the yard to the community center. She held a hand back to Clara, motioning her to stop, to stay quiet, then stuck her head out from under the building.

Aliens.

There were aliens everywhere. They had these beady little eyes, and way too many of them. Batarians. She thought that was what her teacher had said they were called. There were dozens of them, dragging children across the ground, heaving adults onto carts. Not even bothering to step around the dead, just stepping on them. She watched one step in the gut of a young farm hand she didn't know. She watched, horrified, as Mr. Dupree from the house next to theirs was shot between the eyes. She gagged, crawling back under the building. She closed her eyes, then quickly opened them again. It was easier to look at the ground, at the mud. Her mother would be so mad that she got her school clothes so dirty.

"I want you to stay here, okay. And don't look out there. No matter what happens, you stay right here, okay?"

Clara nodded, her face coated in black mud. Lillith almost began laughing hysterically as she thought about how hard it was going to be to get the mud stains out. What a thing to think when the world was falling apart. "Don't leave me," the girl whispered.

"I'm just going to run across real quick and see why the alarm isn't going off, okay? Just stay here, and stay quiet."

"Lilly, no!" Clara's face was covered in mud, the only place where her china-pale skin showed through was where her tears had left uneven lines down her cheeks.

Lillith felt her throat constrict as she looked at her sister. There were other children out there, about Clara's age, in cages. Crammed together. She seem similar things on some of the larger farms. Feed hogs shoved into crates too small for them, left to fry in the sun until someone finally got around to taking them to the slaughter-house. Most of the adults were being killed, though a handful that didn't resist were shoved into similar cages, or put in with the children. She wondered, vaguely, as she stuck her head back out from under the building, where she fell. If she would be spared for her age, or if she'd be killed, for trying to sound the alarm.

As quietly as she could, she made her way along the edge of the prefabs. She didn't look back. She didn't check to see if Clara was following her instructions. She just had to focus on getting across the open area without being seen. She was dirty enough to blend in with the buildings, at least. The white shirt she'd put on in the morning was black now, the mud having dried slightly. The grime that had been kicked up on the buildings was almost the exact same shade. As long as no one looked too close she'd be invisible.

Her hands were shaking. She couldn't stop them. There was more gunfire, and the air was thick with the smell of blood and smoke. There was a fire raging now across one of the wheat fields, and a good number of the outlying buildings were churning up black, acrid smoke. She glanced down a side street and saw her house. It was in flames. They rose up into the sky, dancing as the wind shifted. It was beautiful. She gagged, vomited behind the general store. Mrs. Smith-Dyson ran it with her husband. Lillith saw her body, lying in the alley behind the store. She'd been shot, twice. She hoped she wasn't being loud, but as her breakfast came up she knew it was unlikely. She sank to the ground, hugging her knees. The smell of the vomit blocked the smell of blood, and she was grateful. She shook uncontrollably. She had to be strong for Clara though, she had to be. Her father had always told her that whatever happened, she had to be there for her baby sister. She had to take care of her.

She pushed herself back up to her feet and began working her way back over to the community center. The aliens were ignoring it, for the most part. They had people lined up in front, but no one was watching the doors. She wondered how long she and her sister had been hiding under that building. The morning dew was gone. The shadows were much shorter. The town was broken. It seemed like only seconds since she'd drug her sister off the road, but it had to have been close to two hours that she'd sat in a panic under than building. So long. Maybe the alarm sounded, maybe she hadn't heard it. Maybe the call had gone out.

She threw up twice more before she made it all the way around the town green. There was nothing left in her stomach, but she dry heaved until she brought up bile. Her throat burned as she neared the building. She crawled, moving away from the safety of the bushes, of the buildings lengthening shadows.

"Well, well, well, looks like we found a pretty one," someone said, grabbing her shirt collar and dragging her up off the floor. She'd known she should have stayed in the bushes, but she'd been so close. She could see it, could almost reach out an arm and touch it. She felt something pressing into her back, and thought it was a gun. Not a rifle, or a shotgun, like her dad used to kill sick cattle, but a handgun. The kind the police used. "You smell like sick, girlie."

"Please," she begged, "please, let me go."

"Let you go? Nono, you'll make a nice little addition. Once you get cleaned up anyway, you humans can't even keep your guts in the right place. Crawling around in the mud like an animal, too. Disgusting."

"Please," she cried. She was shaking again, and the tears were running freely. "Please." She'd always been praised for being a highly articulate young lady, but it all seemed to have escaped her now.

"You do sound pretty when you beg, girlie. Maybe I can make you beg for more? Ain't many pretty ones here, and the kids are useful, but you are a sight better looking." He spun her around, his hand gripping her hair right at the scalp. He used the butt of the gun to lift her shirt, all four eyes leering as her midriff was exposed.

"Nonono. Please, no," she cried. She wanted her mother. She wanted her mother so bad. Just a dream. It was all just a dream.

"You won't know if you like it, if you don't try it," he snarled, pushing her up against the wall. He used his lower body to pin her there, one hand holding the gun to her head, the other touching, touching. Touching everything. She'd made it. The wall her back was pressed painfully against was the community center. She almost laughed at irony as the green-skinned monster tugged at her clothes.

She stopped forming coherent words. She stopped making coherent thoughts. He was just all over her. Hands touching her, prodding at her until her skin burned. She thought she might have called for her mother, but she wasn't sure. Wasn't sure of anything as he spun her around, her face pushed into the wall.

She wasn't sure how long she was held there, how long she smelled vomit and his breath that was like the pig sty when she'd forgotten to clean it. And then there was another voice, deeper, huskier. Her savior, though he was another monster.

"They're on to us, Alliance ships incoming. Probably got no more than six hours to pull out. Get a grip, Dal'iek. Put her in 6."

There was a grunt. Pain. A burning pain she'd been feeling for so long that she'd stopped noticing it. He was lifting her by her hair. Dragging her. Her face was bleeding. She looked out through the haze as she was drug through the dirt. Bodies, everywhere. She was bumped into one. She looked at it. It was a man. She looked again as she was drug away. It was her father. His lower half was half a foot away from his torso. His face, which had for so long smiled at her, had laughed with her, was contorted in pain, covered in blood.

She screamed.

And screamed.

And screamed.

There was the sound of boots and she was thrown to the floor, her head bouncing off a rock. Suddenly, her vision went red and her attacker slumped on top of her. He was on top of her again, and she was screaming. Still screaming. Jack was standing behind her, his father's rifle in his hands. He took down two more before she watched his head explode. He slumped forward, on top of the batarian that was on top of her. She was covered in a mess of batarian and Jack's blood. She gagged, threw up bile. She was shaking. She couldn't move.

She heard Clara, but couldn't see her. Could hear her calling her name. It echoed in her head, but everything was so fuzzy. She hoped she was still hiding.

The aliens were scrambling for their ships. A group of snipers were picking off survivors that they saw out of the cages. She could hear the crack of the guns, smell the ozone as the guns heated up. They didn't see her. They thought she was dead, buried as she was under her attacker and Jack.

There was a single cage left outside the ships. A team of aliens were trying to get it loaded, but a taller batarian in much nicer clothes gestured to them. They stopped what they were doing, left the cage in the middle of the field. Through the haze of blood she could see her mother. She was right against the bars. She was looking right at her. One of the batarians threw something in the cage before running up into the ship.

Their eyes met across the field. Her mother looked so sad. She yelled something to her daughter, but Lillith couldn't hear it. She tried to call to her, tried to crawl to her, but couldn't get her muscles to work. Her mind to work.

There was no one around. No one to tell. She was hidden.

She lay still, staring at her mother as her entire town died. At least her mother was safe. At least there was that.

And then the cage exploded.

Red rain fell on Mindoir.

* * *

_This is for Sirrocco for being a stupidly awesome friend when I need one, and for making me spit soda out my nose, and giving me the idea in the first place. And to Theodur, who made me realize that retellings don't have to be boring (and now, because of that, I read way too many of them for my own good). You guys rock :)_


	2. In Darkness

Light streamed into the hospital room; motes danced in the beam. There were no flowers, no cards. No get well soon balloons. There was a single teddy bear on the bedside table. It's black, button eyes stared out at nothing. A young woman, a child, sat on the bed staring blankly at the wall in front of her. Her eyes had no more life in them than the bears. Her hair tumbled down her back in waves. A caring hand had brushed it out until her hair shone. She picked at her dinner, going through the motions like an automaton rather than a person. She chewed, silently, eyes never leaving some point on the far wall.

In the hallway a nurse looked in through the security window on the door and sighed. So few survivors on the planet, so few breathing bodies. The small town where the girl had come from had been the worst. Two survivors, just two. Neither an adult. The girl's wounds hadn't been serious, mostly just cuts and bruises. The trauma was mental, and that took much longer to heal. Longer than the hospital could keep her without sending her to the psych ward. The nurse didn't want that to happen. The child had so much promise, so much to live for if she'd only let herself see it. Surviving wasn't a curse, like so many saw it. It was a chance, a chance to make things better. The girl's sister came in every day, brought by her caretaker. The younger child had been dehydrated when they brought her in, but little more. She'd been hidden under a building. The soldiers had been on the planet for almost a full day before they'd found her, directed by the older girl's delirious cries. She couldn't remember the attack, she said her elder sister had made her hide, made her close her eyes. No one would escape the destruction of the colony unscathed, but children were resilient. She might fare better than most. She had been the only child between the ages of five and twelve across the whole planet that they'd found.

The nurse felt a hand on her shoulder and turned. The resident psychologist was standing behind her. He was a tall man, and much younger than he looked. Wisps of gray were at his temples, but he was barely thirty-five. He was handsome, in a classical sense, and she smiled at him. Not that he noticed.

"How is she today?" he asked, flipping through her chart.

"The same as she was yesterday. I like to think she is getting better, but I can't see it." the nurse sighed.

"She is, slowly. I got her to look at me the last time we spoke. Has her sister been in to see her?"

"She was here earlier. She perked up a little while she was here. Dr. Francis says she'll be discharged in the next day or so. All the bleeding has stopped."

"I'm going to go in and talk to her," the psychologist said handing the files to the nurse, "I'd hate to see her go when her mind is so fragile. Do you know where she's going?"

"She and her sister are going to live with a family friend back on the colony. The capital wasn't hit as hard, from what I understand. Her sister is the only family she has left." The nurse took one last look through the window at the girl. She'd become a nurse to help people. There had been a million other things she could have done with her life, as her father kept reminding her, but this was what she had wanted. It was never easy to fail.

The doctor opened the door, and they went inside. The nurse stood by the door, a silent witness.

"Hello Lillith, how are you doing today?"

The teenager in the bed ignored the doctor, continuing to mechanically eat the mashed potatoes on her tray. Her eyes were unfocused, far away. The fork came down, scooped up the food and entered the girl's mouth. She chewed, swallowed. The motions were repeated. Again. And again. She didn't turn as the doctor slid out a chair and moved it to the side of the bed. She didn't pause in her silent eating. Down, up, chew, swallow, repeat.

"I see. I don't know if you remember me, but I'm Dr. Victor Waterhouse. But you can call me Dr. V. You've been to see me a few times this last week, do you remember? Yes, of course you do."

Down, up, chew, swallow, repeat.

"I hear your sister came by to see you today. It must be nice to have a little sister. I only had older brothers. Six of them. I hear she's doing really well. That you saved her life."

Down, up, pause, chew, swallow, repeat.

Dr. Waterhouse smiled. He was getting somewhere. "I'd really like to keep in touch, after you go back to Mindoir. With both you and your sister. Just to make sure that saving her life hasn't caused some unhealthy hero-worship in her."

Down, pause, up, chew, swallow. "I am not a hero. Certainly not hers. I let mother die."

If it wouldn't have been completely unprofessional, the young doctor would have fist-pumped. This was the most he had ever heard her say in the entire week she'd been here at this tiny medical station on Benning.

"You didn't let anyone die, Lillith. The Batarians killed them. There was nothing you could have done. Your parents would be so proud. Your sister was the only person to not have so much a stubbed toe. Maybe a little dehydrated, but that's it. That's because of you."

Her eyes slid back into focus and she turned to look at the psychologist. Her frown grew deeper. "You weren't there. No one that was there is still alive. I could have saved them."

He shook his head, reaching out to lay a hand atop hers. She pulled away and he held his hands up. "What do you think you could have done?"

"Something. Anything? Instead I just lay in the mud. I was sitting in the middle of the street staring at her when the grenade when off. I should have said something. I should have gone to her. I should be dead with them." There was no emotion behind her words. They were delivered with the cruel certainty of facts, no matter how false they were.

"You had a fairly serious concussion. You were bleeding from several serious wounds. Put the blame where it belongs, Miss Shepard. It's not with you. It's with the slavers."

She rolled her eyes, and it was such a beautifully normal teenage thing to do that the doctor almost laughed. He caught himself before it could bubble up and smiled at her instead. There was a long road ahead, but he no longer doubted that she would get there.

They continued to talk, and slowly, ever so slowly she began to accept her innocence. Not entirely, but enough that many of his fears for her were expunged. He made his goodbyes an hour later, and when he left he left a human being, instead of just a shell. She even smiled at him when he left.

After the doctor had left, Lillith sat staring at her hands for a long time. They had spoken of what had happened. Not to her, she couldn't bring herself to talk about what had happened to her, but to her family. Her mother. Her father. They were both gone. She'd seen them both.

Her father, dead in the street, his blank, soulless eyes staring up at the smoke-filled sky. It was hard to picture the smiling, gentle man who had run their family farm now. She just saw his face, covered in blood, his lips pulled back in a silenced scream. She could see his hair, all messy and in disarray. She should have straightened it. He would have wanted her to straighten it.

Her mother, standing in a cage full to bursting with people she knew. Jack, her sometimes boyfriend and often times best friend. Little Janis Pollak, who had stopped her on the way to school just the day before the attack to show her how she'd lost her first tooth. Mr. Arnold, owner of the feed store by day, hobbiest electrician by night. And her mother. Her frustrating, amazing, mother, who had bandaged every scrape. Who had kissed every boo-boo she'd gotten as a child and made it better. They had been in that cage. All mashed together, screaming and crying. Except her mother. Her mother was a calm in a raging sea. She had stood there, and met her daughter's eyes.

And then...

And then...

Lillith closed her eyes. She wouldn't think about it. She couldn't think about it.

Easier to think about the batarian. The batarian that had stopped her from making it to the community center. Only, she hadn't needed to get there, had she? No, she'd discovered upon waking up in the hospital that someone had gotten a message off to the Alliance before things had gotten too bad. The ships had been so far away though. She didn't know how long she had lain in the mud, buried under bodies. How long her sister had hidden under the building, crying, terrified, alone.

She felt herself begin to cry and forced herself to stop. Crying solved nothing. It wouldn't bring anyone back. It wouldn't bring her parents back, or any of her neighbors. Her friends.

She would continue to protect her sister.

That was all she could do. She would be strong for her, take care of her. She couldn't make up for her failure. She couldn't turn back time. But she could make sure Clara had a future. Make sure Clara never had to worry, never had to remember the horror that had been Mindoir.

They were going back there. There was no real way to avoid that. She had to be strong, ready, before they got there. The doctor wanted to keep talking. He wanted her to break down and tell him anything. That couldn't save anyone. It couldn't save her. She had lost everything. Everything except Clara. And she would make sure nothing happened to that little girl. Her baby sister.

No matter what happened, Clara would be safe.

The following day Clara showed up with the social worker. The social worker talked at her. Just kept talking at her. Not to her. Very few people talked to her anymore. Clara stood a step behind the overdressed woman and hid a smile behind her hand. Lillith wanted to smile at her, wanted to be herself for her, but she just glared daggers at their escort instead. The doctors did one final check, gave her the datadisk to give to her doctor on Mindoir.

Only her doctor was dead. She'd be given a new one. Someone she didn't know. Someone who hadn't been there for all the silly childhood diseases. That hadn't talked Lillith through growing up. Who hadn't smiled and told Lillith's mother to sit outside while they talked. Someone who didn't know her. Didn't understand her. Because all the people who knew her, all the people who understood her, all of them were dead. The only one that wasn't was eight years old. Her hair in pigtails, her eyes bright and shining. The last two weeks had been good to Clara.

Lillith wondered if Clara knew that their parents were dead.

Wondered if anyone had bothered to tell her.

From the silly smile and dry eyes she'd guess no. They had waited for her. Waited for her to tell her. Or maybe they had simply forgotten. Forgotten the little girl who had hidden under a building just like her sister had said. The little girl who would probably be better off dead than with Lillith has a sister.

It was all too much. She locked her jaw, squared her shoulders, and _moved._ She'd move on. She'd protect her sister.

Even if it was from herself.


	3. Coming Home

**Went to the coffee shop to write the next chapter of Gravitation. An hour, three cups of coffee and a French Crueller later, I had this. Go figure.**

Evenings on Mindoir were still the same. Almost two years had passed, there were almost no familiar faces, she was miles from the town where she grew up, but the evenings were the same. Strangers, now, walked the streets, returning from office jobs and the farms. They strolled, laughing, as if their friends and neighbors hadn't been whisked off to who knew where. As if they hadn't been brutally murdered in front of them. Maybe most of these were transplants. Maybe they hadn't been here when the sky had rained blood and the stench of fresh bodies had filled the air with sweet musk.

It made Lillith, wonder, sometimes, why death smelled sweet. The smell of rot was particular, there was nothing quite like it, but it wasn't the sour smell of old garbage, or the heavy sticky smell of manure. When flesh burned it smelled good. When a body bled out, it wasn't pleasant, it didn't smell like cotton candy or freshly baking cookies. It smelled wrong. But it also smelled sweet, like an overripe orange, perhaps. Not just like that, but the same sort of smell. Like something was off, but you couldn't place it.

She often wondered, while she sat at the top of the prefab housing where she and her sister now lived, if she would smell sweet when she died. She wondered if different people smelled differently when they began to decompose. Did those that lived an honorable life, a good life, smell better than murderers and rapists? Did petty thieves smell worse than rambunctious children? The woman they lived with, a very old friend of her mother's, called her morbid. Tried to lock her away when she had such thoughts, when she voiced them. She'd lock her in the basement for saying she wished she'd been able to save her mother. She'd beat her with a long, bent cane if she said she'd wandered past the mortuary on the way to school. She wouldn't feed her if she did a school essay on the events of two years before.

Lillith did these things on purpose. At first, she'd kept it to herself. It was simple self-preservation. But as she began to behave, the tiny, quirky things her sister would do brought down the wrath of their keeper. As long as Lillith continued to misbehave, Clara was safe. As long as Clara was safe, Lillith didn't dwell on how badly she had failed her family.

She stood, swinging back away from the edge. It wouldn't kill her if she fell. She wondered if she'd feel anything. It was rare, anymore, that she felt anything but empty. It was a good feeling. People didn't expect things from empty people. The empty were left to their own devices. The empty were not noticed when they left. The empty were just window dressing, always there but never considered. She liked being like that, liked watching but not being watched.

More than anything though, she liked being on the move. Stagnation began to wear on her quickly. She'd lain under the corpse of one of her closest friends for hours. She'd been locked in a hospital room for weeks. When they'd returned to Mindoir she'd been forbidden from walking as far as the corner store by herself. She'd been told to stay in her room. To behave. To not wander.

She picked fights with the kids at school. She and Clara were bussed twenty-four miles into the capital every day for school. Children from all the surrounding towns were brought there. All told, Mindoir now had less than three hundred children on its surface. Twenty of them were less than two years old, just less than two hundred were of school age. Families no longer moved here. Young couples moved in, maybe they had a baby, but no one brought their children to live here. Children came to Mindoir to die. That was usually what the fights were about. They were, all of them at the school, survivors of the attack. Some had been hidden in closets. Some in basements. Some, like her, under the bodies of loved ones. She and here sister were the only two from the town she'd grown up in, a town that had once had nearly three hundred children just by itself.

She'd see them, and she'd see Jack. His father's gun in his hands. His body, falling towards her. They hadn't fought. They hadn't tried to save their families, their friends. They had hidden, scared and alone. The younger ones she could forgive. Like Clara, they had no business trying to take on the monsters that had done this to their home, but many were her age. Jack's. If Jack had lived.

Whenever she came home with another detention slip and a black eye, she'd be locked in her room, and told to grow up. To stop blaming everyone else.

And she tried. She bottled it all in as best she could. She knew she was weak. She knew she was guilty. And she knew there was only one way to make up for what she had done. Hadn't done. Make up for what she should have done.

There was a banging behind her, a clang of boots on the ladder. She turned, spotting Clara pulling herself up over the edge of the building. She'd grown a little in the last two years. Her hair was shorter, no longer tied in braids that Lillith would have spent hours weaving. Her face was gaunt, hollow, but not in the good way that Lillith felt. It was the hollowness of feeling. She felt too much, even though Lillith did everything she could to protect her. She crawled along the roof and sat, legs dangling over the edge beside where Lillith stood. Lillith sat back down. Her sister hated heights, had since she was small.

"She calling me for dinner?"

"Not yet. I got this today." Clara handed over a heavy parchment envelope. Lillith hadn't seen paper like this before. It felt strange in her hands; they didn't often use paper, and this was very different from anything they ever had. It was rough, thick. It was a dirty ivory color, and embossed. She opened it, careful not to let it tear.

Miss Clara Shepard, _the paper read_

It is our pleasure inform you that out of the many applicants, you have been chosen to attend The Livingston Institute of Art and Design as one of our scholarship students. Classes begin on April 17th for our next term. Please be at the school no later than April 10th so that you can be assigned housing and classes. We look forward to seeing you soon.

Leonard Paltzi

Lillith read it over a second time, then looked at her little sister.

"I'm going to join the Alliance," she said, handing the paper back. She saw her sister's face fall, an emotion her couldn't place crossing her eyes briefly, so she added, "I can't stay here anymore."

"Oh," Clara whispered, the letter crumpling in her first, "I just thought, this is what mom wanted for me."

"I know. And I'll take you before I enlist." It's what their mother would have wanted, but Lillith tried not to think about that. She tried not to think her parents at all. Her father's bruised and broken body, lying in halves on the street. Her mother, alive and looking at her one moment, gone an instant later.

"What about Virginia?" Virginia was Lillith's only friend. She'd lost a leg during the attack, when she'd tried to drag her baby brother from the hands of the monsters. The batarians had left her for dead, certain she'd bleed out. Clara was the only person who knew that what they had went beyond just a simple friendship. They'd become lovers almost by accident, both just trying gain some semblance of normalcy in a world neither could comprehend. Clara didn't know about the others though. The young man from the candy store. He was four years her senior. The guy who ran the hardware store. He had been her first, just weeks after they're returned to Mindoir. Virginia was the only one that made her feel anything, when everything was over. The only person on this rock that she'd miss. But not enough to stay. What they had wasn't the sort of thing you stayed for. Not when you were seventeen.

"What about her? She's got a life here."

"You'll just leave her like that? Does she know?" Clara was always full of such righteous anger. It burned within her. Lillith just hoped it would protect her when she finally got away from this planet.

"'Course she doesn't know. She'll know when I stop showing up. We should get back, for dinner."

"Why are you so cold, Lilly? Why don't you ever talk to Dr. V? You can sit in on our vid call when he checks in again, if you wan. He's really helped me, Lilly. I think he could help you too."

"I don't need help. And I really wish you wouldn't talk to him. Shrinks are bad news."

"He just wants to help," Clara muttered, pulling herself to her feet, careful not to look over the edge. Lillith helped her up, stood between her and the edge as they made their way to the ladder. She also wished that Clara would just call up to her, rather than trying to climb up here. She hated it when Clara was uncomfortable.

They walked the rest of the way to the tiny prefab where they lived in silence. It was best not to be too loud when you approached. Lillith wondered if the constant fear of going home was something that would fade when she finally got away from here. She wondered if her life would ever be normal again. She doubted it, but didn't care. She'd been trained like one of Pavlov's dogs, and even if she got away entirely, she'd salivate every time she heard that bell. Every time she approached this dirty little building.

She ran a hand through some of the grime on the side of the house and rubbed it into her clothes and on her face. She pushed some of it through her hair. The black contrasted sharply with her short red hair, and made it clump uncomfortably.

"Why do you always do this? If you haven't actually been in a fight, you make it look like you've been rolling around in the dirt. It just gets you in trouble."

Lillith shrugged, using the puddle under the water spigot to catch her reflection. The truth was, coming home a filthy mess, though it made her stomach churn, and took all her willpower not to throw up, kept all the attention from her little sister. Clara rarely did anything that would normally get anyone in trouble, but if Lillith didn't go over the top, than all the negative attention in the house was turned to her little sister.

Fights at school, unwanted opinions, and a little bit of mud. It might cost her dinner, and get her stuck in her room, or down in the dank basement the prefab had been built over, but it was worth it to never see a single bruise on her sister's pale face.

April was only a month away, if her galactic calendar was still correct. Just a few more weeks and she'd never have to do this again. Clara would be safe, far from here.

And she'd be with the Alliance.

She could still remember the soldier that had removed the bodies from her. That had looked into her eyes, and with such tremendous joy had shouted that she was alive. She'd never forget his face. Never forget the warmth she'd felt as she was removed from the place where everything had gone wrong. He'd listened, believed her, when she'd said her sister was alive. They'd gone to look for her. The Alliance had saved Clara, and she owed them everything because of it.

She hadn't even closed the door when the shouting started.

Just a few more weeks.


	4. Be All You Can Be

Lillith looked up at the towering building in front of her, then down at the glass front doors. The building towered over the street, the sun shining off the windows. The upper floors rippled with rainbow colors, looking like the sun on an oil spill. There was no line. She had hoped, when she had left Clara in the capable hands of the school, that when she finally reached the Alliance offices that there would be a line. She wasn't sure if that desire stemmed from wanting to be able to walk away or not. If the line would have been an excuse to not sign up. To go back to the emptiness that she had so carefully constructed around her for the last two years. Or if it had been a hope that if there were others that they wouldn't notice the skinny girl who was sore out of place in this large Earth city. Or if she had simply hoped that if there was a line, there would be other recruits, and if there were other recruits then she might have been able to find out what awaited her on the other side of those doors.

Whatever her wishes, though, there was no line. She could see the banner on the other side of the windows. It proclaimed, in blood-red letters, that you could 'Join the Alliance' and 'See the Stars, and Make a Difference'. There were pictures of generic soldiers, smiling out from under the helmets of heavy armor, the visors up to show their faces. She remembered the way a bullet had torn through Jack, and thought maybe the soldiers in the pictures would be better off putting their visors down. It might offer a modicum of protection. She rubbed her hands on the thighs of her jeans. She was afraid that her palms were sweating, but they were dry. She realized, that though she knew she should be nervous - that this was the biggest thing to happen in her life since it had ended two years before - she wasn't. This was going to happen, and whatever they said, whatever occurred on the other side of the doors, it was not like things could get worse.

She squared her shoulders and, keeping her chin high, walked through the entrance. The door slid open, chiming brightly.

"Good afternoon!" a too perky voice chirped as the door slid closed behind her. "Welcome to the Alliance! How can I help you?"

Lillith looked around for the source of the voice, and saw a dark-haired woman behind a small desk just inside the doors. She wore almost no make up which made it difficult for Lillith to put an age on her. It was hard for her to put ages on people here on earth in general. On Mindoir, a woman with skin that smooth couldn't have been more than a teenager, but here Lillith had met women in their thirties that still looked so strangely young. The sun aged a person, she knew, but she hadn't been aware that it aged them so much.

"I'm here to enlist," she said, fighting the urge to stick her hands in her pockets and make herself a smaller target. It was a habit she'd picked up over the last couple years, and she was determined to lose it. There was nothing out there that she had to fear, nothing worse than what had already happened to her. She was going to be a soldier, and soldiers were never afraid.

"That's wonderful!" She pulled a datapad from a stack of them on the corner of the desk and handed it to her. "Just a few quick questions, then you'll meet with the recruitment officer, and then the medical. Have you shown biotic potential?"

"Um, no?" Lillith glanced down at the screen of the datapad and then moved away before the woman could speak again.

The questions were fairly straightforward, and multiple choice. She started to answer them randomly, the way she had her tests at school, but stopped herself. She actually wanted to succeed at this, and she settled down to answer them correctly. She breezed through them, they were personality questions not an english test, and returned datapad to the woman. She got an overly large smile in return and was told someone would be out to speak with her shortly.

Retaking a seat by the window, she took in the room closely. It was larger than most buildings on Mindoir, and cleaner than most as well. Mud and dirt and the smell of the farms permeated every inch of life of on the colony. It worked itself into the fibers of a persons clothes, coated the floors and the walls. It hung heavy in every inch of air from one side of town to the other. She'd only been gone for two weeks, but already she missed it. Not the woman she was living with. Not the people who weren't the people she'd grown up with. Not the memories of her family dying. But the planet. The quiet sounds of the farm that she hadn't tended in two years. The animals had been sold, she knew, the farm burnt to the ground. Maybe that would have been worth going back for. She missed the fact that the colony had picked themselves up and gone back to tending sick cows and herding sheep. They were a robust bunch. She was the only one that hadn't been able to let go. To pick herself up. She didn't deserve to live there anymore. A door opened on the far side of the room and a man she recognized stepped out.

She didn't know his name, but she knew his face. She had been thinking about him just a few months before, when she'd made the decision to come here. The big ears, and the slow smile. The laughing, childlike eyes. The way he was always messing with his hair, but could never get it neat. He had picked her up from the blood soaked ground. He had promised to look for Clara. He had found her. She remembered that he had called her brave. She remembered his hands, picking her up, and being so careful about where he touched her. Reassuring her that he was only there to help.

"Well well well," he said, "Look what the cat dragged in." He smiled at her, and she found herself smiling back. "You clean up well, Ms. Shepard," he laughed, and motioned for her to follow him down a long carpeted hallway.

"It's nice not being covered in blood," she whispered.

He turned, eyes laughing, until he saw she was serious. "Ah, kid, you're too young to think like that. Where's that baby sister of yours anyway?" he asked, leading her into a small office and motioning for her to take a chair. There weren't any personal photos here. The walls were covered with more recruitment posters, the desk bare but for a single terminal and a small stack of datapads.

Lillith thought of her sister. The promises that she would write, that she would tell her of all the adventures she was having. Thought of the way her eyes lit up as she took in the work of artistic masters that lined the walls of her new school. Thought of the way that everything bad that had ever happened to her baby sister was because of her. This was a chance to break that bond, clean. A chance to let her sister live without the shadow of her own failures.

She couldn't do it. Clara was the only reason she continued to breathe.

"She got accepted into a large art school...somewhere. I didn't do very well in Earth geography in school."

He laughed, "No, but I suppose you didn't really need it. That's wonderful, about her getting into school." He tapped a few buttons and she saw her school transcripts pop up on his terminal screen. "You outstripped everyone in computer science and engineering though. Play with computers a lot growing up?"

"It isn't difficult to outstrip your peers when you're graduating class has only three people in it," she said, and again he was surprised to find she was being serious, not self-depreciating, "but we didn't even have a computer growing up. My m- my mother does- didn't like them. I just, I have knack, that's what my teachers said...before, everything. And my, um, my dad and- my dad-," she swallowed, hard, and all emotion left her voice, "My dad and I used to work on the equipment around the farm." She looked at him, her eyes empty; she felt better when she was empty.

He tapped a few more buttons, flipped through pages of other reports. She wondered if her psych reports were in there. That was her only fear, that something in there would prevent the Alliance from taking her. That they would turn her down because of what had happened. She hadn't been talking to the psychologists like she was supposed to. She didn't have anything against them, not really, but she wasn't sure how talking about things she already knew would help anything. "How would you feel about officer training?" he asked finally.

"I...I didn't want...I don't think I'd be very good at it." The idea to come here had been born from the last thing Clara had said to her before everything had gone wrong. That she would rather join the Alliance than marry a boy. Well, Lillith would rather join the Alliance than remain in the cesspool of memory that was her home.

He reached under his desk and handed her a omni-tool. She didn't have one of her own, but she knew what they were. Growing up, the mayor had been the only person she knew with an omni-tool. Most of the people on Mindoir had moved out there, in the years before the first contact war, to get away from what they saw as the slow creep of technology. Though they ate up new advances in farm equipment eagerly enough. "Do you have one?" he asked. She shook her head. "Think you can figure it out?"

She inspected it closely, then slipped it on her wrist. A second later there was a glowing orb sitting across the room. "No hostiles detected," it beeped, then disappeared. She gasped, and smiled, the first real genuine smile that had crossed her features in two years.

"That...wow," she gasped, and fiddled with it a bit longer, sounding very much like the child she had been two years earlier. The man across from her leaned back in his chair and watched her. A moment later the orb reappeared.

"No hostiles detected. Please command," it said this time. The soldier jumped.

"How did you do that?"

"It seemed silly that it would simply disappear when there wasn't something in the immediate area. And the cool down rate before another could be dispatched means if you walked into an ambush it would be useless. I'm sorry. I can change it back." The orb disappeared as she slipped the omni-tool off her wrist and handed it back to him. "Do only officers get those?"

"No. But there aren't may enlisted engineers. Seems a waste for all the schooling."

"I barely graduated high school."

"Ms. Shepard, that program is over two years old. You just saved the Alliance billions of dollars in research in what you just did. I think they can overlook your lack of higher education."

She smiled at him, and nodded.

"Well, in that case, report to clinic." He handed her a datapad. "Do you have any questions for me before you go?"

She shook her head and stood up. At the door, she paused, "What's your name?"

He laughed, standing and following her into the hall, "Lieutenant Ernesto Zabaleta. You can call me Ernie until you get through all the paperwork, then it'll be Lieutenant Zabaleta."

"Or sir," she questioned.

"Or sir, exactly. And," he paused, and reached out, stopping her with a hand on her arm. "I wanted to thank you."

"For what? Agreeing to become an officer?"

He shook his head, and sighed, "No, for saving me. What I saw...everything that happened to your family, your home. I was in a bad place when it was all over." He looked away, rubbing the back of his neck, "Thinking about you, and your sister, knowing that you two were okay, that out of everything that had happened that you two were out there. I kept going because of you two. I almost lost everything, I started drinking. And I sat down, took a look at my life, and wondered what you'd say if you knew. I didn't think you'd be too happy with me."

"I didn't even know your name."

"Still didn't think that you'd appreciate it if you knew that the guy who found you turned into a drunk." He shrugged. "Anyway, thanks. And the next time I see you, you better be saluting. Give your sister my best."

She nodded solemnly, and checked the datapad for directions to the clinic.

Her mind was swirling with what he had said. Just another failure to lay on her shoulders. She didn't believe that he had stopped because he had been thinking about her. She had barely been coherent the last time she had seen him. But had she done something different, had she been able to save someone, anyone, from the town she'd grown up in, maybe he wouldn't have been drawn to drink in the first place. She was glad he had overcome it though, even if she thought his thanks was misplaced.

She asked the overly perky lady in the front room if there was a place where she could write a letter, and then sent a message to Clara. Just as she said she would. She knew she should cut ties, that her baby sister would be better off without her, but the bottom line was that Lillith needed Clara so much more than Clara needed her. And though she hated herself for being so selfish, she told Clara everything that had happened, and Lieutenant Zabaleta's greeting, before heading to the clinic for her physical.


	5. Strings of Tension

Thunder rumbled across the sky, the clouds hanging low and pregnant. The clouds threatened to open, to spill onto the ground and turn the clouds of dust that the soldiers turned up into black, sticky mud. The trees bent in the wind, their leaves rustling, their dance muting the sound of the soldiers. The world looked gray, the colors subdued in the filtered afternoon.

The low light suited her mood. It had been dark and stormy ever since she'd first gotten her orders. Even in the trip from Earth to this tiny outpost, space itself had seemed dimmer than usual. The lights on the transport matching her mood. The starts refusing the twinkle. She'd attempted to ease some of it with sex, but while that usually helped to keep her from thinking, everyone here were N-recruits. Everyone with her on that ship the day before had been an N-recruit. There were rules about fraternization, and then were Rules about fraternization. Hooking up in the dark, when you're alone, and bored, and are probably just going to be cleaning latrines the next day anyway was one thing. Even if caught, it generally resulted only in an eye roll and a 'be more discrete next time'. Mere hours before you were about to be selected for training in the elitist corp of soldiers the Alliance had? The training that would weed the boys from the men, if one didn't mind the sexist turn of phrase, and Lillith had long ago stopped caring about that, that was another thing entirely. This was it. After this they'd either be N-recruits, students on their way to be the best of the best of the best, or they'd be shuffled back into the lines of dropouts where their buddies would buy them drinks and commiserate. And secretly believe that they had wasted valuable time trying in the first place.

Lillith was fairly certain she'd be sent back, despite the high praise she always received from her commanding officers. Basic hadn't been difficult, she'd grown up on a farm and the truth was nothing they'd thrown at them was more difficult than the year Flower had had twins and the second had been traverse. Her father had been out of town, the vet had been at the Coplands after their cow had prolapsed, and Lillith had known she either had to step up and handle it or Flower and her calf were going to die. Being a soldier really wasn't that much different. You followed orders, did what needed doing, or people died. Whatever they could be throwing at them today was just one more step. Over the last four years she'd hardly had to try for everyone to think she was excelling.

She hadn't wanted to join the N-program. She'd been happy as a grunt, unknown, unnoticed. She'd enlisted to forget. She'd become an officer to play with tech. Special forces had never even been a thought. She hadn't wanted people to see her. But the brass _had_ noticed her. Noticed that she didn't just create amazing tech on the fly, but could also use it better than most. They had need for engineers on the field, they said. People who could run the technology while the brawny idiots fed the enemy's weapons. She'd done great in basic, they said. She had some of the highest times, considering her specialization, they said. People in training for front line soldiers had worse times, they said.

They had said a lot. And she had listened, and nodded, and saluted as needed. But she hadn't wanted it. She hadn't really wanted to be an officer in first place, but Zabaleta had saved her, had saved her sister and she had owed him. And playing with electronics was a small joy, an easy way to focus.

She hadn't owned these people anything. They didn't know her. To them, she was a number, a figure. Someone they could hold up when they needed more funding.

She had written to Clara, telling her about how they were putting her in the field. She'd promised herself she'd stop doing that. That had been years ago, now. They'd marked her as B4, and then six weeks after she'd settled into the lab, they'd called her up, changed her designation to K1, and put her in the field. She'd promised herself that she would let her sister be, that she would cut all ties with the life she'd had before, but she'd made a point of not making friends, and she hadn't known who else to turn to. She'd gotten an enthusiastic reply from the eleven year old, telling her that she was special, that they needed her, and that that is what she'd wanted in the first place. To be fighting for something. As long as she was careful. As long as she was safe. And so she had, and she was, and for a long time things had been good. She set up turrets, and configured drones, and found new and exciting ways for military grade omni-tools to kill. And she learned advanced weaponry, and was quickly accepted into her platoon as just one of the boys, despite four of them being women.

The nightmares had mostly gone away, and when they didn't, there was usually someone willing to share her bed to help her forget. Usually Kathleen, with her flaxen hair and squeaky laugh, but sometimes Jason with his large hands, and warm chest and eyes that sparked with fire that Lillith knew had died in her years before. That was how it had started, three years before.

That was why she was so edgy now, even though she knew she could handle anything they threw at them.

She'd become addicted to it. The sex and the fighting and the quiet laughter. It was cathartic, in a way. She'd hurt afterwards, her body and her mind flayed, torn open with self hatred, but when she got up in the morning, she was calm. She was collected. She was ready for anything. It worked faster, easier, than playing with tech.

There was so much riding on this, though, and neither Kathy nor James had even been selected for initial testing. The men and women around her were strangers. And none of them were going to risk their own careers to get the Alliance's golden girl off.

So now she stood, looking out at the open field as the sky finally made good on its threats and opened, and trying to find it in herself to want this. The N-program was an honor. And it was not easy to get into. Of the thirty-six possibles with her today, four would make into the program, at most. She didn't know if she wanted to be one of those four. But she found it exciting. The fact that she could be. If only she wasn't wound so tight.

She slammed a fist against the door frame, making her comrades jump, and turned and began pacing the room. They'd been told to wait. That they'd be given instructions on how the test would begin shortly. That had been hours ago. No one had come. It had gotten colder. Darker. Soldiers passed outside, sometimes slowing down as they neared, causing everyone in the room to tense, expectant.

Lillith had been agitated before they'd even arrived here, and she didn't like being used like this. It was no secret what this was. Patience was more than just a virtue for special forces. For any soldier. Running in half-cocked would get you and your team killed. You sat, you waited for orders, but you didn't let your guard down. But, she was getting hungry, and the rain just reminded her that she had to pee, and there wasn't a restroom on this side of the complex.

It didn't help that she was the youngest person here. She rolled her shoulders, absently scratched at the jagged scar over her eye, and cast her gaze over her companions. They ranged in age, certainly. A man in the corner was probably the youngest, after her. He was probably 25, maybe 26. And there was a woman, her hair grown out and tied up in a bun on the top of her head; she was probably the oldest. In her early thirties, perhaps. At 22, Lillith felt like she'd skipped a grade in school, and everyone stood head and shoulders above her. And she couldn't help but think that they all thought she was the upstart teacher's pet for it.

There was an empty chair by the door and Lillith sank into it. The weather reminded her of Mindoir. Of the long, rainy evenings. Of sitting by the window with Clara, her mother knitting behind them, humming quietly. Their father at the table, going over the finances, or reading the news, or fixing some random pieces of farm equipment. It reminded her of how her father had taught her to work that equipment. Her mother had argued that a girl would never need to know that, that they had farm hands to handle the equipment. She and her father had laughed, and continued on. She'd brought home science papers with top scores, and her mother had frowned and told her feed the pigs. She wondered what they would think of her now. Using the skills she'd learned to feed the hungry to kill. She closed her eyes tight against the memories, trying hard to remind herself that none of that had happened. That Lillith Shepard did not exist before the day she'd walked into the Alliance recruitment center. There was no happy family. There was no playing hockey in the street. There were no afternoons at the fair, cotton candy getting stuck in Clara's hair, the town boys trying to win her prizes from the ring toss. None of that had happened. None of that existed. It was just a bad movie that sometimes played in her head.

Life began when she got her dog tags.

She was the first to her feet when a Lt. Commander stepped up onto the small porch outside the portable. Her eyes had been closed; she'd heard her companions laughing that she'd fallen asleep. But she heard the sound of boots, the lack of hesitation before they mounted the stairs, and she was up and at attention before any of the others had started moving.

The Commander smiled at her, but she kept her face a mask despite the shock. She didn't know him. Didn't particularly want to know him. He smiled at the others, a few smiled back.

He walked the length of the room, then turned, his face suddenly impassive, his eyes cold as steel.

"What the hell are you kids standing around for? Get out there. Double time! There are thirty-seven emergency lockers in the woods. Open them, bring the contents back to me. No omni-gel. MOVE!"

She was out the door, her boots sticking in the mud, even while his last word continued to echo.

It was darker in the trees. She could hear the others behind her, breaking through the underbrush. She brought up the light on her omni-tool, slid under the low-lying branch, the mud oozing around her. The lightweight armor she wore kept the mud away from her skin, for which she was grateful.

Mud always sent her back. When it was cold, and sticky, and slipped up the back of her shirt. She'd smell rotted breath and blood, and nothing could keep her focused. But the armor helped. Kept it from her skin. Kept her on task.

She spotted a blinking orange light out of the corner of her eye, a little over half an hour later. She paused behind a tree, listening for the sounds of the three dozen other people. One box for each of them. Speed was the goal. To get the contents back.

She stilled her breathing; her heart rate hadn't even spiked during the run into the woods. The area around her was silent. It was a bad sign, a sign that the other's had already found their boxes. She crouched low, creeping towards the emergency box, it's light disappearing as lightening lit the trees around her. She crouched beside it, pulled out her omni-tool, and waited.

A twig snapped to her right, and she lowered herself over the light, while she waited for the boxes security system to link to her omni-tool. Whether another soldier, or an animal scurrying for cover, she didn't know. The omni-tool beeped, and eyed the complex lines moving on it. They shifted as she watched, the codes forming a pattern. They'd been taught how to read them in basic. She tried to use the way she'd been taught. She tried to follow the sequence using the patterns she'd been told would exist within the encryption. It took her half a second to realize that that wouldn't work. There was a secondary encryption. The way they were taught, it would take nearly twenty minutes to break it.

Follow orders. Do what you were told, how you were told to do it.

No omni-gel.

That's what he had said. No cheating, he'd implied.

It wasn't really cheating, if you simply didn't do something the way they expected though. Thinking out of the box wasn't for a soldier to do. Even officers had their orders. Generals had to think. Admirals had to think. 2nd Lieutenants did not think.

N1s though, if she ever planned on making it to N1, they had to think.

She made a quick change in the visualization of how the encryption looked on her omni, and less than a minute later, the box snapped open.

There was a bag inside, Alliance blue and white. She pulled it out, checked for security markers,and finding none, opened it. It was empty. She used the light on her omni-tool to double check, but it was empty. She felt it, looking for secret pockets. Nothing. N-recruitment training was just about as useful as having a screen door on a spaceship.

With a sigh, she flung the bag over her shoulder and set off at a quick run. She spotted someone hovering over a box, it still unopened. She grinned, adjusted the strap on the bag and called back to him.

"You're doing it wrong!"

He jumped, and she shook her head. Never let your guard down. He wouldn't last the first day. It occurred to her that half the people in that room she 'd started in didn't seem to really be N-qualified at all. But what did she know? She fixed tech.

She broke out of the tree line, and the villa was empty. She slowed to a walk, adjusting the bag on her back again. It was empty, but kept sliding on the mud the coated her shoulders. There was no one. The place had been teeming when she'd entered the woods. The rain was still coming down, though it had slowed to a drizzle on her trip back. She spotted someone moving around the corner of a building and she quickened her step to a trot she could keep up for hours. They were moving away from the main area. She stayed back, watching them, until she caught their rank in the reflection off a window.

She sped up again, falling into step beside the Staff Commander. He stopped and she snapped to attention.

"At ease, soldier. What can I do for you?" he asked her.

"I'm Lt. Shepard, sir. I have the contents of the box."

He looked surprised when he said, "So soon? Haven't seen anyone else. Let me see it."

"I was told to bring it back to Lt. Commander Offelson, sir."

"I gave you an order, Lieutenant."

She bit her tongue, it wouldn't do to be kicked out because she back-talked an N7. She slid the bag from her back and handed it over. He didn't take it, just eyed the canvas.

"Mess hall," he said, pointing back the way she came.

She set off again, swinging the bag back onto shoulders. There still wasn't anyone else around, but when she opened the door to the mess, the place was crowded. Everyone there was clean, their uniforms looking recently pressed. She wiped mud from her eyes, wincing at the way she dripped on the white floor. She left a trail of mud as she walked toward the Lt. Commander. He smiled at her again, when he saw her approach. There were whispers that seemed to echo in her head as she neared, saluted, and handed over the bag.

He opened it, read the label, which had been to Lillith's eyes nothing but a random set of letter and numbers, then nodded and pointed at a group sitting in the corner. They had no designation on their uniforms, which told her nothing except they had already passed her training.

"Lieutenant, you're going to take your fire team, infiltrate the base to the north, and retrieve the package. Casey, Jones, Kipling, she's in charge. You know the drill. Move out."

Shepard gritted her teeth. She'd been up for over eighteen hours. She was the first back. And they were sending her out again.

"Coordinates?" she asked flatly. Her omni-flashed as Jones transferred them over to her. She turned on a heel and loped out of the mess.


	6. One of the Boys

The rain came down in sheets. Visibility had been poor to begin with; the trees too dense to get a very clear picture of what was going on below. They'd held the base for the last three hours. Not long after they had arrived, gotten past the few soldiers that were guarding the place and secured the drone in this high-tech game of capture the flag, orders had come through from the Villa. They were not to return to the base. They were to leave the drone where they found it, secure their position, and wait for reinforcements. The reinforcements, if Lillith was going to make a guess, would be the rest of the recruits. She'd expected a few of them up here already. She had, in truth, expected them to all be fighting each other to get to the base. Instead, it had just been the four of them, Lillith in command of the three N1s.

Who now took her orders without question.

The first mile out from the villa had been the three soldiers, who had gone through this training together, just the month before, laughing and attempting to take control of the group from her. It had been a subtle undermining, and had she not been expecting it, she probably wouldn't have noticed it. But she had expected it. And she had noticed it. And they hadn't been terribly pleased with her when she told them to shut up, remember their orders that she was in charge, and to pick up the pace. She'd yelled at them more than once when they had lagged behind. They had had to take more than one break because, despite being the best of their class – or so they said, they hadn't been able to keep up with her. Jones had almost given them away when they'd first neared the base, he had been so out of breath.

She knew she kept a hard pace, that the miles they had traveled were long and rough, but they were part of the N-school. Despite having had a full nights rest, upon receiving their new orders her team had breathed a sigh of relief. They'd looked drained, and despite having been up now for over twenty-four hours, she'd told Jones and Casey to get some sleep and then taken Kipling with her to stand watch. The automated security systems that she had disarmed as part of their plan to get in here were reinstated, and from there it was a simple matter for her to watch the perimeter on her omni-tool while walking the parapet, and have Kipling guard the 'enemy' troops they had taken prisoner.

Upon capture, the Alliance soldiers holding the base had been shocked, but had quickly told her that they were now at her disposal. She had met the requirements of the assignment, and they would help her and her team watch for friend or foe that might approach. She had laughed at them, locked them in one of the empty offices and begun locking all entrances.

Which they should have done in the first place. Especially since it wasn't a huge leap to think that they would know that they were coming.

She wondered exactly how it was that the N-school got its reputation of being the best of the best, the elite forces, the cream of the Alliance crop. Because to her it didn't seem like this was any more difficult that basic. She was more tired, certainly, and hungrier, but if a soldier couldn't function while tired and hungry in her opinion they should have stayed a civilian.

She eyed the trees, certain she'd caught movement. Other than the rustling on the leaves in the wind and the rain, she didn't see anything though. She glanced down the parapet and sighed. She'd probably get a better view from the cameras, but she didn't want to leave the perimeter unguarded. The security office was too far away to effectively launch a defense with only four people. It would have been difficult even if she used the 'enemy' combatants at her disposal. She wiped the rain from her eyes, tucked her damp hair, which had fallen loose of the tight bun at the base of her skull, behind her ears and leaned against the walls. Her eyes were drawn, again, to the tree line.

In her minds eye she saw the ships landing in the school yard. Heard the screams of her family, her friends, her neighbors. She watched the crops burn.

"Halt! This base is held by the Alliance. Declare yourselves!" she shouted, hoping to be heard over the wind. It was unlikely, but if she shot friendlies, that would be the end of her chances here, more than likely.

Her comm crackled.

"This is 1st Lieutenant Baker. We're here to help."

"Serial, Lieutenant." It was a risk, using that curt tone with a superior, but if she let them approach and it wasn't Baker, it would be even worse.

Baker called back his numbers. She brought up her omni and checked them against the Alliance database. Few people were aware that it was possible to do such a thing, were unaware that with the exception of deep cover operatives, with some of the darker operations, everyone's name, serial and rank were available a single click away to every service member with the Alliance.

The numbers matched. The photo attached to the record didn't match anyone she remembered from the long hours spent in that tiny room waiting for her assignment.

That didn't really mean anything. It was possible that Baker had succeeded in taking control of the fire team from the recruit. She stood, indecisive, for only half a second before responding.

"This is 2nd Lieutenant Shepard. We've succeeded in securing the base. Approach, but keep your hands where I can see them."

She changed channels, woke, much to her annoyance, all _three_ of the N1s assigned to her, and called them to her location. The four soldiers were already halfway to the base before they arrived. If they hadn't been friendly, she'd probably have been dead except that her cloak had kept her mostly hidden. It didn't work well in the rain, but it was better than nothing.

"Tim-meh!" Casey called down to the approaching group, and the one Shepard assumed was Baker raised a hand in greeting.

"You been keeping her on her toes?" Baker called back, and the three N1s chuckled.

"More like she's been keeping us on ours. She pushed us all in line! If she could, she'd bring us up on charges for falling asleep!"

"Bet she's was sleeping against the side of the wall earlier," Baker chuckled, showing his hands and grinning at her. She didn't smile back. She didn't like being talked about like she wasn't even there. She especially didn't like it when she wasn't sure of the intentions of half the conversationalists.

"Hasn't slept a wink. Haven't seen her snag a stim, either. She's gonna beat you in seconds, Tim."

Baker looked up at her, showing her his empty hands, and regarded her with deep appraisal. She'd been looked at like that a lot since joining the Alliance. She generally got looks like that just before they promoted her, or after she'd completed a task they'd assumed was impossible. No one had expected much from a colony kid. She just wished she could feel some pride for beating their expectations, rather than thinking that they'd simply set those expectations too low.

"Permission to enter the base, Lieutenant."

"He's an N2," Jones whispered, her eyes sparkling with laughter, "I'd let him in."

Shepard glared at the N1, and radioed the base. The four in front of her were the second fire team, and now that she looked she recognized the sulking brunette in the back. She let them in, where Baker congratulated her, released her 'prisoners' with a deep belly laugh, and told them to report back to the villa. After she got an hour's sleep.

She refused to let him know how thankful she was to lie down. The hour was barely enough to keep her upright, and if anything she felt worse after she woke up, but if the next few weeks were all going to be like this, she needed to get used to the short sleeping hours.

She'd heard rumors, and they were being proven right. The more so on the trip back, when the N1s easily kept pace with her. They were quieter on their return journey as well. They complained less.

They hadn't gone more than a quarter mile before it dawned on her that everything up until Baker had shown up had been part of the test. And if the way they joked with her was any indication, she had a feel she'd passed.

"So, I hear David Anderson was supposed to be coming to the villa for part of this training session, but he got called up by the council for something," Kipling said as they neared the tree line.

"Damn aliens are such a pain in the ass. I'd been hoping to meet him. First N7. The man's a damned legend," Jones replied, sounding a little star struck.

"He's just a man," Shepard told them.

"Aw, man, Shepard! Don't tell me you've met him!" Kipling groaned.

"Of course not. But I've yet to meet a soldier that is anything more than human. We all have the same weaknesses, the same frailties. The difference between him and us is just what he did with it. His ability to push passed it. We're all just human."

"Whatever, Shepard," Jones chuckled, "when we went through our training, not a single one of us actually secured the base. And, what? Kip, you were the only one that didn't lose command of your squad, right? I got cuffed by mine. I'd put money on you outshining Anderson. Good money."

Shepard remained silent as they broke into the school proper. There were people around this time, more than she'd seen since the shuttle had first dropped her off.

They were approached by a woman, her light armor shining in the light. She nodded at the three N1s, "Get cleaned up, hit the mess. Debrief'll be in the morning." The three nodded and trotted off toward the showers. "Those three are pretty good, really. Heard they fell asleep on you though," she continued after they'd left. She waited for Shepard to reply, but the an answer wasn't forthcoming, she chuckled and pointed toward the outdoor firing range to the west. "They're going to have you stripping the rifles for teams leaving in the morning. Get them all cleaned, and reassembled by 0400. I wouldn't expect any help, you're breaking villa records."

She didn't want for Shepard to acknowledge that she understood, just turned on a heel and headed back into the maze of buildings. Shepard counted to four, and headed for the range.

She was hungry. She was exhausted. Field stripping weapons sounded like heaven – she'd be able to sit down.


	7. The Anderson Loop

**Just a little thing I threw together from Anderson's interview in the DLC. There are no spoilers for it, though. **

"Alright, ladies, I hope you all got a decent night's sleep last night. You're going to need it." The N5 paced before the two dozen remaining recruits. Lillith watched him closely, looking for any sign of what they were walking into. In the weeks since she'd first walked into the N-school she'd found that most of the officers in charge of their testing gave small things away. Jones, who along with Kipling and Casey had become something along the lines of a friend - or as close as you could come in in just a few weeks when one of you didn't have any downtime - had told her not to rely on that. She'd lucked out, she had said, and that eventually she wouldn't be able to prepare based just on the way people moved.

It looked like that day had come.

"We've tested your independence you're teamwork, we've tested your leadership, your ability to think under pressure. We've tested your resolve. We've tested your ability to work under fire, and how well you perform when deprived of any sort of luxury, including sleep. I know a lot of you are looking around and thinking that as a group you've done well. That yours will be the first N-class to have more than a handful of soldiers make it. Think again, kiddos.

"I know, also, that chances are most of you already know what you're walking into. Our training is hardly classified, though few like to talk about losing. I can tell you though, that no matter what anyone has told you, what anyone thinks they might know, even current graduates, it won't work.

"You're on your own.

"Drop is in ten minutes.

"I hope you're wearing clean panties."

Shepard looked around at her compatriots and thought about what he had said. Jones wouldn't say a word about what was coming up, and just grinned at her when Lillith asked. She considered asking the guy in the jump seat beside her, but reconsidered. She got along with nearly all the graduates at the Villa, as well as she got along with anyone, anyway, but her peers had come to hate her. With a few exceptions she'd surpassed them all in every test. Her head start at the beginning of their training had given her an edge later on – an ability to catch an extra hour or two of sleep when waiting for group drop offs like this.

She'd never had problems integrating with her teams before entering the school, but none of her peers wanted anything to do with her anymore. Which made group dynamics difficult, and group training almost impossible.

It would be difficult to show her ignorance under the best of circumstances, but with everything that was going on, not even considering her age, to do so now seemed impossible.

Out of the corner of her eye she spotted the pilot putting his breathing mask on. She watched him a moment, then grabbed her helmet and snapped it in place. There were a few chuckles from her peers, and she flipped up her visor.

"Pilot's preparing for a low-atmo drop," she said as the energy barrier went up between the back cabin and the cockpit, "I'd get your helmets on."

"They won't drop us without warning," a man near the back said, shaking his head, "it would kill us."

"As long as it's not zero-atmo, they'd have enough time to drop everyone with any sense and still be able to resuscitate the rest of you," she said with a shrug, "learned that in zero-grav training." As had the rest of them - or should have.

Half of the remaining recruits grabbed their helmets and put them on, double checking hoses and seals. Lillith lowered her visor and leaned back in her seat. At least a few of her fellow soldiers with her weren't complete dumbasses. She had been beginning to worry.

At nine minutes, 30 seconds, the airlock alarm went off.

The remaining soldiers glared at her while they scrambled to get their helmets on. The man in the back, the one that had questioned her, couldn't get the secondary seals to hold, and when the back cargo door opened, his was the only set of restraints that didn't flare with a malfunction light and send its passenger floating to the surface of a craggy asteroid.

The shuttle had gotten them close enough that the asteroid's gravity kept them from flying into the expanse of space, but not close enough to land them, at least not immediately.

A group of soldiers kicked in their suit burners, using the momentum to send them floating down to the surface of the asteroid. She saw a few others reaching for the buttons to do the same.

"Don't!" she shouted over the coms, her voice echoing with that of perhaps two or three others.

"The burners use the oxygen from your tanks to ignite. We don't know how long we'll be stuck out here," on of the other voices on the com said.

"Unless we start moving out of orbit, breathing is probably better than ground under foot," another added.

"This would be a really crappy way to die," Lillith muttered, unaware that her com was still on.

"I'll second that," came a laugh.

Through the channel there was no way to tell which of the ten or so people still in orbit around the large asteroid was speaking, and she didn't know voices well enough to put names to them. It was better than being alone though. Being trapped in the suit, floating in the void – though technically they were in a decaying orbit around an asteroid and not actually free-floating in space – caused her stomach to churn. The smell inside her helmet was nauseating, and the air filters could only clean up so much of it. The suit was confining. She'd had a strong dislike for tight spaces since the attack on Mindoir, and hardsuits were the epitome of tight, confining spaces. She pushed past the fear, and did her best to keep her breathing calm.

Hyperventilating would only get her killed.

"We need to come up with a plan to get out of here," a male voice on the com said.

"Do you know what we have to accomplish?" Lillith finally asked. Her ignorance could get her killed out here.

"Survive," a different person, perhaps the one that had seconded her wish to not die in the vacuum, answered.

"We'll survive so long as our tanks are full and then we're SOL. We're too far from a planet to even think about making it to one, not that even then it would do us much good, me thinks. We're constrained by how much oxygen is in our tanks. That hardly seems like a fair test," another person chimed in, killing the conversation. Talking probably wasn't good for their reserves anyway.

"An Anderson loop," Lillith suggested after they'd floated for a few minutes in silence.

"That's suicide! And we're too far from each other anyway! Fuck it, that's Shepard isn't it? You actively trying to get us all killed now?"

"I'm trying to get us all out of here alive! The loop would set up an oxygen recycler between our tanks. It'd triple the length any one of us could survive alone."

"Or empty all our tanks! How the hell to you propose you set this up while we're floating?"

"We're falling at different rates, depending on where we were strapped in the ship. As we pass one another, grab hold. We'll be connected before we hit the rock."

"The loop's never been tried!"

"The theory is sound!"

The Anderson loop had been proposed by David Anderson and a group of others about twenty years before. It involved linking the oxygen tanks between two hard suits through the CO2 filter used on toxic atmo planets. The filter was useless in vacuum, but it had been suggested that by hooking the two suits together, each would end up using the other's scrubbed air. The other's were right – it had never been tested outside a lab, and if done wrong would kill them all, probably before the shuttle could get back to pick them up. But it was better than floating around doing nothing and waiting for each of their tanks to fail.

"It's too dangerous," came the resounding answer from nearly everyone. A few burners kicked in and their floating group go smaller.

"What the hell are you?" she shouted, "Little girls?! Too afraid to go to sleep because of monsters under the bed? Grow a pair, the lot of you! This is a hold out. They want to see if we'll come crawling back before our air runs out. Only one person can win this with the rules they've laid out. I'm proposing we shove their rules back in their goddamned face, and you're too chicken to try it. None of you even deserve to be here!" That tirade had probably used up enough oxygen to keep her from outlasting anyone, but she was so sick of these people.

They came from comfortable homes, with loving families. Their first taste of death had been in the Alliance, and even then most of them had probably only seen the enemy die. Alliance casualty rates were fairly low, even in close combat situations. They trained their people well. But it landed them with a bunch of little children.

She fumed silently for near an hour before someone grabbed her arm. Whoever it was tapped their tank, and then the secondary hose line. The question was clear. The hour had drained almost everyone's tanks. The shuttle had come back and picked up a few people from the asteroid about ten minutes earlier. They'd entered a waiting game at this point.

She nodded, and unhooked her own secondary hose. It took some finagaling, a little wrangling, but they eventually had it hooked up.

Her HUD suddenly flashed that her CO2 filter had kicked in. She shot a thumbs up at her new partner, and they returned the gesture. Her oxygen tank reading began to go down more slowly, and the air took on a slightly staler smell, but where before her suit was giving her perhaps forty minutes before oxygen loss, it was now at almost eighteen hours. That was better than the lab tests.

Being trapped right next to another person, so close that they were almost touching, was unnerving, but she just kept watching the CO2 scrubber and smiling.

It had worked.

Nineteen hours, forty-seven minutes and fourteen seconds later – after landing on the asteroid and picking up a third in their group – the tanks finally fell into the red. The three had shuffled, crab-like, into a tiny crevice on the asteroid surface after the rest of their team had been taken off the rock. They'd made the offer, now that they knew the loop would work, to them all again, but no one would take them up on it. They'd slept in shifts, one staying awake to make sure that no one rolled over and accidentally pulled out a hose, but for all of them it was the most sleep they'd gotten in two weeks.

The shuttle came to pick them up well before the lower oxygen levels began to affect them. As one they popped their helmets off once the shuttle all clear light came one. All three of them were a mess. Sweat had their hair sticking to their faces, Lillith's, being longer, worse than her two male companions, and grime from being stuck in the suit for so long had built up a flaky crust on their skin.

"Impressed doesn't even being to say my feelings for what you did out there," a voice said from the cockpit. They knew that voice. Not personally, but all of the Alliance knew that voice. "I never actually thought anyone would stupid enough to try that. I didn't truly believe it would work."

David Anderson, first N-graduate, first N7, Alliance legend, stepped toward them.

"Normally, we have a finally test. I think considering the records you broke today, though, I can say it won't be an issue to welcome you all to being N1. We've already checked all of your other scores, and the decision won't be final until Friday, but welcome aboard."

Anderson shook the hands of the other two, and pointed them over to sit. He shook her hand, then leaned forward, "Someday," he said, "you will have to tell me all about how that worked."

It was the last time Lillith saw Anderson for six years.


	8. Wasting Time

"Shepard!"

The call came from behind her as she crouched down on the dusty ground. A wind picked up as she turned, catching grit in her teeth, her eyes. She regretted taking her helmet off, but it was stifling, and smelled like old sweat and her shampoo. She didn't care for either scent, and it wasn't like she needed it anyway. They were miles from the nearest hostile. She'd learned, years ago, the right time to put on a helmet.

Jones was approaching her, helmet securely on against the harsh desert climate, and she flipped the visor up as she approached.

"Find anything?" Lillith asked, dusting her hands off and hopping from the small dune she was hiding behind.

"It's clear for about fifteen miles, still. Compounds about 28 clicks southwest, but they've got a fairly heavy patrol, and they've been ramping things up since we got here. Kipling's got a line on a couple of the patrol guards. Command said to hold out for fly by."

"Of course they did," Shepard sighed, shaking her head. "What does Major Kyle think?"

"Kyle's an idiot. They only reason he's in charge is because he knows how to play the damn brass. You know he failed to make it through the Villa twice? I didn't even know they let you go back if you flunked out."

"He is your commanding officer, show respect."

"All due respect, ma'am," Jones said, crossing her arms, "you are my commanding officer. An N4 out ranks a D6 in the field, regardless of rank." It surprised Shepard just a little that all three of her fire team from that first day at the Villa seemed to take it for granted that in the years since she had quickly outstripped all of them. None held it against her, though plenty others did.

"And Major Kyle was put in charge of this mission. We follow his orders. And he's really not a bad guy, if you get to know him."

"I am well aware of how well you know him, LT," Jones laughed. "Almost as well as I know you," she added with a wink.

Lillith glared at the other woman and shook her head. Sleeping with Kyle had been a mistake, a huge mistake, and one she had no plans on ever repeating, ever. She told herself that, in her defense, he hadn't been her commanding officer at the time, that they had both been on shore leave, and neither had been aware they'd been assigned to work together on this godforsaken moon. Sleeping with Jones had been slightly less of a mistake. Even with the other woman being, for what seemed like the first time in Lillith's life, the initiator.

"You were going to tell me what Kyle thought of our orders."

"He follows the line, you know that."

"Lieutenant," Shepard warned.

Jones snapped to attention, shooting off a perfect salute. "Major Kyle believes that Captain Lehreh is correct, and that we should wait for flyover data."

Shepard returned the salute, almost mockingly, "At ease. And thank you."

"Did you find anything up here?"

"Nothing. They have to be getting their supplies from somewhere, but it's not from here."

"The whole op is a waste of time. We should have just nuked 'em from the air," Jones said, voicing Lillith's thoughts.

"Lot of good a nuke will do if the bunkers are as far below ground as intel suggests. Not to mention, if they could just drop a bomb on every problem, we'd both be out of a job." Lillith smiled at Jones, and shoved her shoulder gently, pushing the older woman back towards camp. "Seriously Aimee, don't let the brass hear you talk like that, though."

"Fuck off, Lilly. I've heard some of the shit you tell your superiors."

"And I'm one more insubordination away from ending up on my ass."

"Do as you say, not as you do? What are you, my mother?"

"No, but she told me to tell you she loves you last night."

Jones glared at her, but chuckled. Lillith smiled back, only a little forced, and headed for the back of the camp, where Major Kyle had the comm set up. Jones was one of the few people that could make her smile, really smile, and she knew that she needed to distance herself from the other woman as much as possible. At least when they were in the field. Friends were a weakness. Lovers, a weakness. Family. Lillith thought briefly of Clara – she hadn't called her in months, hadn't written in even longer – and frowned. Her baby sister would tell her she was being foolish. Would tell her to talk to the Alliance shrink again.

That wasn't going to happen.

She didn't need a doctor poking around in her head. She didn't need anyone poking around in there. It was bad enough she had to be there.

Kyle was leaning against the folding table that held the comm link to the ships in orbit.

She nodded at him – Jones was right, she did technically outrank him here, and it was rare that anyone stood on ceremony in the field – and joined him against the table.

"I hear you're bending over for the Captain."

"I understand that you have issues with the chain of command, Shepard. I am doing all I can. I am following orders."

"That's all you ever do. Look, we move in now, we take them by surprise, we're in and out. We need to push forward, and screw that damned intel. It's not like a drone flyover will tell us anything about what's going on underground."

"That is not how it works, Shepard. You know that as well as I do."

"All I know is that I'm fucking bored, Major."

Kyle shook his head slowly, running a hand over his close-chopped hair. She could tell that he was seriously considering what she was saying, and she also knew that he wasn't going to listen to her. She shook her head and stalked off.

They didn't need to know what was in those bunkers, beyond the fact that they were Batarian. They were slavers. She supposed it was possible that there were slaves in the tunnels as well. If they waited, it was more likely that someone would spot them. And if they were seen, those slaves would be dead before anyone even knew they had been. It was how the bastards worked.

She'd been fighting them since the first day she stepped aboard a ship. Her drone had a seek and destroy algorithm specifically tied to Batarian DNA. She'd spent every last credit she made over the last few years on a new omni-blade. She hadn't used it yet. She wanted to christen it in Batarian blood.

Lillith Shepard was a soldier though. She might talk back to her superiors a bit more than they really liked, but she always got the job done. And she usually got jobs done that the brass didn't even know they wanted done. Their overarching orders were to wipe out the slave trade on this moon. She didn't see how sitting around with them thumbs up their collective asses was accomplishing anything.

"Talk to Major Kyle?" Casey asked, his red hair slightly more coppery than Lillith's, and cropped almost as close to his skull as Kyle's

"How could you tell?" she said, slipping onto the crate beside him. He was shuffling a deck of cards. He never gambled, but always kept a deck close at hand in case anyone else wanted to.

"You're scowling, but not yelling at me," Casey answered.

"Funny. I only yell at you when you deserve it. Which admittedly is most of the time."

"Must be bad news," he muttered.

"We're stuck here until the drones do another flyover. Don't see what they expect to find. We need to go in, wipe 'em out, and watch the bastards bleed out on the sand."

"Oh, that doesn't sound personal or anything. Impatient much?"

"You know I am." The sound of screams filled her mind, though she knew they weren't real. She saw her father's body in the dirt. She watched her mother explode. Outwardly, her face was a mask, and Casey made a dirty joke about Kyle and her. She asked him if he took as good of care of the rifle between his legs as the one leaning against the crate.

She smelt the putrid breath of the Batarian on her back. She heard the sound of distant gunfire. Wet, sticky mud slid up her shirt.

Casey told her he cleaned them both nightly. Jones joined them. She gave a detailed, and mostly inaccurate, description of the last time she and Lillith had sex. Shepard embellished it further. Casey blushed.

She heard Clara crying. She felt tears falling down her own cheeks and tasted vomit.

With a jolt, she stood up. It was rare anymore that she had waking dreams like that. The nightmares still haunted her most nights, but she didn't often let the past get to her during the day. It was the fact that they had been here for three days, always having to push back to avoid detection. That they couldn't figure out how the Batarians were getting their supplies. Didn't know how far the tunnels ran. It was the stress.

"Everything okay, Shepard?" Jones asked, laying a hand on Lillith's arm. It calmed her in a way she couldn't understand, didn't want to understand, and she nodded.

"Yeah, just wish we were moving."

"You won't hear any complaints from me. I'd've taken the damned base when we landed."

"Here's to that," Casey added.

Shepard nodded distractedly, eyes drawn to the horizon. She couldn't see the drone, but she knew it was there. It's data would be relayed to the ship, and then pinged back to the base camp. She had a sinking feeling that things weren't going to go well when they finally got the word to move out.

She ran a finger over her pistol, watching for movement in the distance. The earth like atmosphere of the moon made seeing too far difficult. She almost wished they were on a moon more like Luna. Of course, if that were the case, the batarians would have seen them ages ago.

It was the next morning that found the three discussing tactics together in much to same location. The planet below had barely cleared the horizon when there was a commotion behind them. The three turned to spot Kyle leaving the tent where the comm was set up. His face was grim, set and determined as she strode purposefully across the sand. Casey and Jones jumped to their feet beside Shepard as he drew closer, the two exchanging a quick, worried glance.

"Major. What are our orders?"

"Three teams. You'll be in charge of the west approach. I'll be coming in from the east. Havensworth is taking the north. We're to secure the immediate area around the entrance. Stay on the comms, we'll be working our way in systematically. We move out in thirty."

Shepard nodded grimly.

Finally.

They were a go.


	9. The Butcher

The tunnels smelled like refuse, stale sweat and forced sex. But over all of that was the smell of blood. It's sharp tang hovered heavy in the air, and clung to her armor where bits of human and batarian flesh stuck in grotesque rivulets. It was in her hair – her helmet had been crushed about fifteen minutes before, and was currently laying against a wall a short distance behind her – and smeared across her face. Only long hours of training kept her from curling up in a corner and weeping.

The tunnels smelled like Mindoir.

There was some satisfaction, however, in cutting down the batarians in front of her. It was tempered by the losses the teams had suffered. Over forty percent of the troops Kyle had sent into the bunkers had been wiped out.

In the day between when they'd discovered the tunnel entrance and when Kyle had finally given the order to move out, a batarian reconnaissance team had discovered evidence of their landing on the moon. Rather than hunting them down, however, they had shown more brains than Lillith was willing to given them credit for. They'd fortified the tunnels, and by the time the teams had come in, the place was a maze of traps. Over half of Kyle's team had died before they'd gone ten feet. Twenty percent of Havensworth's team had gone as well. Lillith had managed to save all but three of her own people in the initial entrance simply by shoving the lot of them back up the stairs before the tunnel had exploded.

She'd lost track of her kill count, and now just kept a list of her team's casualties. Casey was lying in a pool of blood twenty-six feet behind her.

She supposed that part of the reason her team had been doing so well was because there were so many N-graduates in it. Over half of them were. When they'd been deployed, she'd assumed they'd be broken up. She was the highest graded, but not the highest ranked, which had made her reluctant to take command. Kyle was supposed to have separated them, splitting them evenly for any ops. Instead, he'd grouped them together for reasons only he could know. Jealousy was the most likely idea, Shepard thought.

They rounded a corner and Shepard sent her drone out ahead. They followed the sound of screaming, and took out another group of batarians.

"This is Red leader to Blue leader, come in Blue leader," her comm squawked with Kyle's voice.

"This is Blue leader. Waddya want, Major?" she answered, her pistol sending a round between a batarian's two right eyes.

"Full retreat. We had to back out completely. You're to rendezvous back at base. We're going to have to take care of this another day."

"Negative, Major. We're almost done here."

"Those tunnel run for miles, Shepard. Get your team out of there."

Shepard overloaded an officer's shields and Jones took him out with a well placed shot to the neck. "I'm sorry, sir," Shepard answered over the perfectly clear channel, "but you're breaking up. Can you repeat?"

Jones glanced at her. She was only getting one half of the conversation, but from Lillith's tone she knew the younger woman was lying.

"I said get your sorry ass back to base, Lieutenant."

"I'm losing you sir. We'll meet you back at base when we're done here." She switched the comm off, and ran a batarian that was sneaking up behind Jones through with her omni-blade. "We're spreading out," she called to her team. "We don't have backup, so move carefully, move quickly, and don't leave a goddamned batarian standing. Slaves are secondary."

The batarians had been using some of their human slaves as shields. They pushed rows of young men, woman and children in front of them, shooting at the soldiers from between their heads. The terrified civilians had jerked with the sound of every round fired. Lillith had lost six men before she decided to stop worrying about civilian casualties.

Not a single soldier had died in her team while the batarians used that tactic again. Of the civilians, only one had survived. Discovering that the human wall wasn't working, the batarians had begun shooting _though_ the slaves, to avoid exposing themselves.

"What did the major say?" Jones asked as the rest of the team flared out, half heading down the right tunnel, the rest following Shepard down the left.

"He said a lot of shit. I'm not going to leave this half done because he's an idiot, though."

"They'll court-martial you," Jones answered, eyes glued on the soft glow cast my the drone that bounced off the damp walls.

"They wanted the batarians dead, they'll have them dead. They can't court-martial me for following orders."

Jones eyed her critically, but didn't say another word. They sidestepped a canister rigged to explode, and Lillith shouted for someone to make sure that got defused. If they had to make a hasty retreat, she didn't want to get caught by it on the way back.

The sound of sobbing echoed down the hallway. It was interspaced with screams, high-pitched and painful. Silently, Lillith directed part of her remaining men to head across the t-junction they found themselves at, and then looked around the corner. The hall was empty.

It dawned on Shepard suddenly that they hadn't encountered any resistance since they'd split. She checked her comm, and radioed the other team.

She got no reply.

"Fuck it, Kipling, answer me!" she hollered into the comm, disregarding all protocol. There was just static on the other end. "Shit," she murmured, and looked down the hall again. She could see movement in one of the windows. The hall was lined with glass cages, like at a zoo, and she saw a collection of species held inside them. Asari, turian, human. A handful of batarians, even. "Kipling, last chance, a-hole. Status report."

She met Jones' devastated stare as she got only more static.

"I think we're on our own," she whispered, not letting any of the non N-grads hear her. She didn't trust them not to panic.

"Listen to Kyle, Lil. Let's get out of here."

"Let's try to get these guys out if we can. Hold the tunnel," she said, then louder, "Gently, with me."

It was quick work to release the prisoners, killing the two in the far cell with a young asari. Opening the doors didn't even set off an alarm. She smelled a trap, but she ignored it. They'd get these people out, and make a second push after they were safe. Her comm crackled as she reached the last door.

"Pard...this...Kip...suc...way," it stuttered brokenly.

She had no idea what he was saying, but she knew Kipling's voice even under all the static. "Kipling, you jerk!" she sighed with relief as she led the shivering asari with a broken arm and a biotic supressor around her neck back toward her team.

"Can't...out. Rock...fer...nic. Vo...soon. Kip...t"

"That better be that you're on your way. We're going to be just passed the dead-end with the open cages. You'll probably see Gently, I'm sending him back with some civilians. Send your wounded with him. Hurry up, Kipling."

"They're okay?" Jones asked as Gently headed back the way they'd come with the dozen former slaves and the team continued on down the tunnel.

"Seems like it. Can only hear one word in ten I think."

"Well, at least there's that."

The tunnel opened up into a large room. A half-dozen large, steel doors circled it. She didn't have enough people, even if Kipling rejoined her, to cover them all. She ran a hand through her hair, wincing as the dried blood stuck in her fingers.

She motioned for her team to spread out. They'd have to move methodically – and quickly – to avoid being slaughtered like the others. She walked slowly around the chamber, running gloved fingers over the carvings in the walls. They were crude, and very recent. During sensitivity training way back in the weeks following basic, she'd been forced to sit through the art, culture and history of all known major alien players. Asari paintings, Turian music, Salarian sculpture – all of it had been paraded before her with a brief overview of their respective modes of government and death rituals. On the last day, almost as an afterthought, they'd had a two-hour lesson on the batarians. They didn't know much, the quirky, overeager instructor had told them. The hegemony stifled creative thinking, limited citizens access to any outside source. All art, music and theater was approved by the government before ever being seen by the populace.

But, the man had continued, they had some knowledge of it from bunkers and holds outside the government's domains. Slavers brought with them the culture of their parents, and in low moments when they weren't out killing humans just for the fun of it – that was Lillith's take on it anyway – they carved and painted scenes from their homes.

This was what was on the walls here. Simply drawn images of batarians in fields of some blue corn-like vegetable, children playing in evening light of two setting suns. It wasn't the sort of crude drawing she would have normally associated with the monsters she remembered from Mindoir, the monsters she had fought time and again for the Alliance. She wiped Casey's blood from her cheek, where it was beginning to congeal, and wrote crudely, what she thought of the paintings.

"Shepard?" Jones said, coming up behind her. "I think there are families here."

"Families don't get out of batarian space," Shepard answered, drawing an image to go with her quick sentence. This was in batarian blood, wiped from her armor.

Jones tapped her shoulder, and handed her a toy – a small truck, from the looks of it. Wheeled, like some places on Earth apparently still used, and like most toy cars still were. This one had a small batarian driver in civilian clothes inside, and batarian writing along the side of the truck bed.

As Lillith spun the truck in her hands, a door at the far end of the room opened. A woman, batarian, but clearly female, walked out of it, and stopped dead. A dozen weapons were suddenly pointed at her, and her arms went up, her four eyes blinking quickly.

Lillith saw a spray of blood from the woman's head.

She heard the woman's scream as she watched the body, already dead, crumple to the floor.

She smelt ozone.

She felt the warmth of her gun in her hand.


	10. of Torfan

"Lieutenant, please, have a seat," Admiral Steven Hackett said, taking his own place behind the raised table. "I'm sure you are aware of why we have called you here."

Shepard sat down in the small, wooden chair in front of the platform and folded her hands in her lap. Hackett, whom she'd met briefly once before when she'd been raised to N4, was joined by two others whom Lillith had never met. The room was dark, the overhead lights dimmed, with a single spotlight over the dais. It wasn't a court martial, but she felt as nervous as if it was one.

"I believe so, sir," Lillith said, trying not to slouch and make herself a smaller target. She remembered the cold stare of the woman she had lived with after the attack, the way she had looked down on her with that same steely gaze. If she was lucky, that look meant nothing more than a busted lip or a missed meal, but usually it meant swollen bruises and cracked ribs. That was a long time ago, though, she told herself as she tried to make herself meet the eyes of the assembled admirals and generals. The Alliance had never taken to physical violence in disciplining their soldiers.

"I have a report here from Lieutenant Aimee Jones, N3. She was under your command on Torfan, was she not?"

"Yes, sir," Shepard replied. She had no idea what Jones had written, but she didn't think it could be that good. The cold glare she had received when they had finally drug themselves out of the bunkers had left no question as to what Jones thought of her.

"She says here that the other teams pulled back due to heavy losses about three hours before you finally left the underground structure," Hackett continued.

"That sounds about right. Kyle radioed me just after we'd cleared the first major artery. He was down to about 40% strength. Havensworth was at about the same. My own team had suffered minimal losses and were nearing a major slave hold."

One of the others, a high ranking general, leaned forward, "You were aware that there were human slaves close to your position? You had scout reports?" he asked.

"Not exactly. Most batarian strong holds have a similar layout, however, and logically since we had not reached one yet, we had to be getting close."

"And yet you split your team. If your plan was to get the slaves out alive, wouldn't it have been better to keep your team together?" Hackett questioned.

"With Kyle and Havensworth pulled out, we needed someone to watch our backs."

Shepard answered a flurry of questions. About the woman she had killed - Jones apparently had reported the woman as murdered, despite evidence that she had been slaver herself. About the lines of surrendered batarians. About the rounds she had put between each of their eyes.

Kyle had sent down a large portion of the troops he'd pulled out when she hadn't shown up. He'd kept only the wounded topside. It was that call that had him locked in a mental facility right at that moment, apparently. He claimed he'd sent them all to die. And die they had. Three out of every four of her soldiers had fallen to enemy fire. Kipling had fallen in the last hour. It was for him that she'd killed the kneeling monsters. For Casey, lying in a pool of blood in the main corridor. For her father, torn to pieces by a shotgun blast years before. For her mother, in a cage when she died. For Jack, his head a corona of blood.

For her sister.

She'd gotten a call earlier that day from Clara. News of what had happened had filtered through the news reports. The batarians weren't keeping silent. Women and children, slaughtered, they claimed.

There had been women there, yes. All armed to the teeth, most of them giving orders. A few children, perhaps. Strapped with explosives, and sent, crying, toward the Alliance soldiers. It was an old tactic, older than the Alliance, but they'd fallen for it. Six dead when the small batarian boy had exploded in the arms of one of the soldiers Kyle had sent down. They didn't fall for it again. A round in the head, well before the children could reach them.

Jones had retched in a corner, the first time she'd shot a child. Lillith had held her hair, and apologized.

They'd moved systematically, after that, wiping them all out. At the end of the three hours, not a single batarian had been left alive. They'd been tired, bloody, and less than half of them had still been standing.

She'd tried to explain that to Clara, that the creatures she had killed weren't people, that they were the monstrosities that had killed their parents, but she hadn't listened.

Monster, she had called her.

Demon.

Clara had cried, sobbing over the vidchat line, her makeup running down her face. The paint on her hands had smeared with the mascara, leaving black and blue streaks when she wiped the tears away. She'd asked what Lillith thought their parents would make of what she'd done. Lillith had had no answer. What she had done, she had done _for _them. For their souls.

When the call had ended, Lillith had stared at the small screen for a long time. She'd been conflicted about writing Clara, calling her. She'd always known she was a monster, hadn't been horribly shocked by Clara's words, yet she was the last of her family, the last part of her previous life, and it was hard to let go. But it had been over a year since she'd seen her sister's face. Despite all the things she had said, despite everything she had called her, Lillith's only reaction was shock at how much her baby sister had grown.

It was with those thoughts that she had entered this room. Had saluted Hackett and the others. Had taken her seat and tried not to flinch. It was with that thought that she answered all their questions. The questions slowed, but became increasingly nitpicky. She found she had trouble meeting their eyes. Their tone kept reminding her of standing in a kitchen, a hardwood cane coming at her head. She refused to wince, much as she had refused to even when the cane had made contact.

She answered as best she could, her hands and the back of her neck sweaty. She kept her pace calm when she was dismissed. It could take weeks before they gave her an answer. She would probably be discharged. There was proof that the batarians were in fact enemy combatants, so it was unlikely that she'd be brought up on criminal charges. She leaned her head against the glass of a porthole, and took a deep, shaky breath. She closed her eyes and shoved all her emotions into a corner of her brain. They achieved nothing. Feelings did nothing but get in the way. What was going to happen would happen, and there was nothing more she could do about it.

She'd done this before, after the attack on Mindoir. She'd shoved everything good about herself away, locked it up tight, protected it. But time, Clara, friends and lovers, all of them had slowly opened that door, and Lillith had come crawling back out again. Only to be hurt.

The Alliance was her life. The first good thing that had happened to her since her parents had died. And it was being taken from her. She wouldn't let herself be hurt again. That door would never open again.

She stood up and straightened her shoulders, running a hand through her hair. She turned, thinking maybe she should go get a sandwich, she was kind of hungry. She spotted Jones talking with someone at the end of the hall and moved toward them. She was fairly certain she owed Aimee a lunch or three.

"It's the Butcher of Torfan," a whisper came as she grew closer. There were perhaps a half dozen people behind Jones and the woman she was talking with. They had all stopped speaking when she grew close, and only that name echoed through the halls. The Butcher of Torfan. She'd first heard it the day before on an ANN broadcast. She'd watched, her hands shaking. She felt nothing hearing the name now.

"Jones," she called, ignoring the stares, "I was thinking of grabbing a bite. I'll buy."

Jones stared at her, her jaw dropping. She shook her head slowly, her face contorting in disgust. Before she could answer, though, a woman approached from the far end of the hall. She moved with the deadly grave of a high ranking spec ops officer.

"Lieutenant Shepard?" she asked. Lillith nodded, looking for any sign of rank of the woman's uniform. There was none. Spec Ops certainly then.

"I'm Lieutenant Riley, I'm to accompany you back to Earth."

Jones' face slipped from one of disgust, to one of sympathy. They were placing her under arrest then. That was too bad. She wondered what she would do with herself, afterward. She wondered if they'd still let her work with tech while in prison. She'd like that, she thought.

"Of course Lieutenant. Should we leave now?"

The woman nodded and half turned to let Shepard walk in front of her. "Admiral Hackett wants you in Brazil by Friday."

Lillith glanced at Riley out of the corner of her eye, "Brazil? Headquarters is in Canada, isn't it?"

Riley chuckled, as if it were a joke, "Well, yeah. But you're not going get through N5 training listening to a bunch of stuffed shirts argue with Parliament."

Lillith thought she should be happy. They weren't arresting her, they were, after a fashion, promoting her.

She shrugged.

"Do we have time to grab lunch before we go?"


	11. Above all, do no harm

Lillith rested her weight on her heels and stared at the USS Tokyo as it sat in the docking bay. She had received the assignment just hours before, being pulled from a restless sleep on the crew quarters of Arcturus. The day before she'd been sure they were sending her ground side on Benning – that was what she had been told anyway. Today she was the XO on the Tokyo. Without pomp, ceremony, or explanation. Not that she minded, she didn't mind anything very much. They sent her where they sent her, and she did her job. Since Torfan, what seemed a lifetime, but was really just a few years, ago, that had become easier. The Butcher of Torfan commanded respect, even if it was distilled from fear, whenever she walked into a room. The fact that she rarely, if ever, smiled, just made those around her work all the harder, thinking she was displeased.

Part of her was upset that people thought she'd turn on them. Yes, she'd lost a large part of her squad to those batarian bastards, but every single one of her rounds had found its target. And not a one of those had two eyes. It didn't matter though, not really, she decided, hefting her canvas bag higher onto her shoulder. Let them think what they would. She had a job to do.

Though she kept her emotions under tight control, her curiosity would not let her take rein, and her mind whirled with the reasons why they could have sent her here. She couldn't think of any reason why she'd be taken from a mid-rank field position to XO on one of the Alliance's flag ships. She tried to think of what it was she could have done, and though she kept a list of all her accomplishments, and knew them all well, there wasn't anything recent enough for this last minute change up. A klaxon sounded; the Tokyo was getting ready to start pre-flight checks. She adjusted the bag again, made a mental note to fix the strap, and headed for the gangplank.

She headed up the enclosed ramp, looking for the ship's CO. She hadn't asked who it was. It was an oversight she wrote off to being awoken in the middle of the night and told to get herself to the far side of the station, double time. Excuses wouldn't help her find her way, though. The door to the airlock slipped open as she approached and a young man – young man, she laughed to herself, he was probably three or four years older than her at least – and a familiar face walked out. She smiled, for the first time in months, when she saw David Anderson. He smiled back.

"Lieutenant, make sure everyone's on board, and then meet us in the conference room for final mission orders."

"Yes, sir," the man said and slipped by them.

"First Lieutenant Shepard, reporting for duty sir," she said, snapping to attention. "Permission to come aboard?"

"Permission granted, Lieutenant. It's been a long time."

Lillith relaxed her pose slightly, standing at a strange combination of attention and military rest for a moment before Anderson began to walk back toward the airlock. She fell into step with him, adjusting the bag again. The cinch had to be broken – it was the only reason she could come up with for why it kept sliding off her shoulder. It was pulling nowm though, and becoming more uncomfortable with each passing minute.

"Yes, sir. I had just achieved N1."

"Not too terribly long ago then. You've broken all my records, Shepard," Anderson chuckled, "and created not a few new ones. N6 already. I was impressed."

"Thank you, sir."

"It's well deserved. You were originally supposed to go to Benning, weren't you?" They'd made it up to the bridge, and Shepard eyed her new shipmates critically. Few were her equal, she knew that, but all too often since she'd started to be assigned to non-N-grad fire teams, her shipmates did little but slow her down. It didn't look like this assignment would be much different. She knew they were all competent. You didn't get on the Tokyo without knowing what you were doing, but she also knew that competency alone didn't get the job done right. Anderson took his seat in the captain's chair and smiled out at the stars. She hoped he knew that too.

Lillith hefted her bag again. She had hoped to be able to put her bag away before they actually left dock, but that didn't look to be possible. The pilot, a young woman practically bouncing in her seat, was already reading off the start up numbers. Lillith moved slightly towards her, glancing over the pilot's shoulder at the readout. She wouldn't be able to fly a ship like this, at least not well, but she had an appreciation for the tech. The Tokyo was equipped with older models of the same solid state holographic interfaces that were used in modern omni-tools, but it's last retrofit, under the ships previous command, had seen a series of upgrades to the software. The pilot's fingers flew over the controls, and she was completely unphased by the presence of Shepard behind her.

"We'll be ready to leave dock in just under half an hour, ma'am. A diplomatic shuttle pushed us back on the list."

"Yes, thank you."

The pilot went back to her work, running through check lists and countdowns. The ship shook slightly before the inertia dampeners kicked in as the docking clamps were released. They floated silently at the dock, waiting permission to leave the station. Shepard cast another critical eye around bridge then returned to stand beside Anderson. She hefted her bag again; the thing was beginning to drag on her shoulder. It had never been quite right since she was 16, but now it was beginning to ache horribly.

"Sir? What are you orders?" she finally asked as the ship began to pull away and head for the relay.

"Shepard," Anderson laughed, a wide grin splitting his face, "let's go see what we can find."

Lillith adjusted the weight of her bag so that more of it sat on her good shoulder. It wasn't good for her spine to have the weight lopsided like that, she knew, but if she was going to have to keep the thing on her back the entire flight to the relay it was better that than having to hit up the doc for yet another scan that would reveal no actual damage to her shoulder.

"Yes sir," she said, wondering if maybe all the tales about Anderson being a great leader were a bunch of tall tales recited to get soldiers to enlist. She knew the Alliance was already beginning to do that with her, they had shuffled her through various photo shoots just a few weeks ago. Smile at the camera, look like war is fun. Look like killing is enjoyable. Look like you still have a soul.

There had been some minor backlash from the batarians when the first wave of those promotional pictures at hit the Citadel, apparently. Shepard had yet to set foot upon the center of galactic government, but her image was plastered all over the human areas. There had been a minor riot, led by batarians, but backed by a number of humans as well. The Alliance had done what they could to pacify everyone after what had happened on Torfan, but the nickname she'd picked up there had stuck. The protesters had apparently wielded signs saying 'Don't let the Alliance turn you into the next Butcher of Torfan.' Lillith, when she'd heard about it, had smiled and said that if that was the best slogan they could come up with, they were doomed to fail. It wasn't even catchy.

"Shepard?"

"Yes sir," Lillith answered, keeping her eyes on the stars as they flowed past the ship.

"Crew quarters are a level down. I'm sure you can find your locker on your own?"

"Oh. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," she said, before turning and heading for the stairs. As soon as she was out of sight of the bridge, she let the bag slip from her shoulders with a sigh of relief. It wasn't even that heavy. She didn't own very much, and she'd been shuffled around enough that she'd taken to keeping most of her few possessions in an Alliance lock up anyway. It was her damn shoulder. But there was nothing she could do about it now.

There were whispers in the hall as she walked the corridors looking for the crew lockers. There was a string of sleeping pods along one wall and a handful of bunks across from them for short naps if there wasn't time for a full sleep cycle. Lockers, however, seemed in short supply.

"Can I help you find something?" A woman's voice interrupted Shepard's search, and she spun on a heel to be greeted by a woman in her early fifties, perhaps, maybe a little older; still young, all things considered, but with grey hair, and, despite her age, a grandmotherly smile.

"Crew lockers. I can find them." She turned away, continuing her search.

"You won't have much luck if you continue going in that direction," the woman answered, crossing her arms and smirking.

"Excuse me?" Shepard said, stopping and turning back again. She was the XO on this ship, and she was not about to be talked to like that.

"Crew lockers are down the hallway back there. Just before the medbay. I'm Dr. Chakwas, and I don't think it is too much of a leap for me to say that you are Lieutenant Shepard?"

Lillith bit her tongue. She didn't hold much faith in doctors, and the last thing she needed was to get on the bad side of another one. She'd left a string of angry medical professionals behind her, though admittedly, most of them were psychologists. The doctor was, however, the only person aboard the ship that could give her an order besides Anderson. It had to be medically related, but Shepard had found over the last few years that doctors had a horrible habit of finding something medically wrong with someone when they didn't like them.

"Oh. Thank you. Yes, Lieutenant First Class Shepard, a pleasure to meet you." Her arms were full with her bag, and she didn't particularly want to shake hands anyway, so she simply rolled back on her heels, then attempted to move past the doctor toward the hall she had indicated.

"Is you shoulder bothering you?" Chakwas asked, blocking her way.

"No, I'm fine." She attempted to move around the other way but the doctor stopped her again.

"Well, if it does bother you, I'm always available."

"Yes, of course." Lillith did her best to keep the snap out of her voice, but was fairly certain she failed. Why was it that everyone with a medical degree thought they had the right to poke their noses in where they didn't belong? She'd passed her last physical, she's passed her last mental exam, wasn't that good enough? Did they have to keep pestering her? She glanced over her shoulder and saw the doctor watching her. In defiance, she slipped the bag back on her shoulders and raised an eyebrow at the doctor who simply smiled back at her.

Wonderful.

She hadn't been aboard two hours and she'd already discovered one person she never wanted to see again.

* * *

Shepard leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Her head was throbbing. The bright light overhead wasn't helping things, but it was better than attempting to work with the tiny wires in the combat drone without it. The one inch square box that housed the processor for the drone, and linked it to her omnitool had been damaged in the last fire fight. The Tokyo didn't see very much ground combat, but when they did it was usually brutal. Though the ship was generally tasked with diffusing internal situations in the colonies, they did run into Batarian slavers and merc groups from time to time.

It had been the Blue Suns, patrolling just on the edge of the Terminus and Traverse that had damaged her drone. The drone had been overloaded, but before it could fully integrate, a biotic had hit it. The feedback from the double blast had fried the circuitry, and left her blind. They'd been able to flush the Suns from their hidey hole and get the supplies they'd stolen back to the colony anyway, but the drone had been destroyed.. Lillith had been sitting at the table in the mess ever since they got back, attempting to fix it. She'd had no luck, and her head was splitting from the work.

The issue seemed clear enough. A fried wire that was preventing the SSH from initiating, but she couldn't get the drone to form from either the direct button on the box nor from her omni. She'd replaced the wire, twice, tried rerouting it around the fried terminal, and had even gone so far as to replace the processor. Nothing had worked, and trying to figure out what to try next had the back of her skull pounding.

She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, attempting to clear her mind. She knew what was wrong, she knew how to fix it, she just didn't know why it wasn't working. When she looked back at the table there was a dark brown bottle in front of her, the label proudly displaying its ancient earth heritage. Beer was a scarce commodity in space. A few colonies brewed the stuff, and those wasn't terribly expensive, but it took up valuable space that was better used for more important things - like food and weapons. Earth brewed beer was especially rare. It rarely got exported off planet, and when it was it cost a fortune. She glanced up from the bottle to see grey eyes smiling back at her.

The beer suddenly didn't look quite as appetizing, coming as it did from the ship's chief medic. She'd so far been able to avoid having to to go to the see Dr. Chakwas for any injury, and she certainly had no desire to see her when she wasn't hurt. The doctor's smile had the horrible habit of reminding Lillith of her mother as well. It had the same warm, knowing tilt to it. It was a smile that said that she was willing to listen, and that, at the end, she'd bake you cookies and tell you everything was going to be alright. It was a smile that made Lillith think of blood. That made her think of how humans don't sound much different than cattle when they are slaughtered.

"You look like you could use a break," the doctor said. She slipped into the seat across from Shepard, without so much as a by your leave, her own bottle already open.

"I'm fine," Lillith snapped, pointedly ignoring the chilled bottle and returning to her work.

Chakwas smirked and crossed her arms. "Did I say you weren't, Lieutenant? But you do have a headache, most than likely caused by eyestrain. You have also soldered that same wire, in the same place, four times in the last ten minutes. So, as I said, you look like you could use a break."

"Well, I don't. Thanks." She picked up the soldering iron, and realized that, just as the doctor had said, it was the same wire she'd just replaced a few moments earlier. She paused, then continued anyway. She couldn't let the doctor get to her. She didn't need medical assistance. She had to see the alliance doctor, and their shrink, every year. If there was anything wrong with her, she'd have been told. She certainly wouldn't be XO on the Tokyo. She could feel Chakwas' smile, though, as she continued her work on the drone. She knew it was petty, continuing to work on it, and she knew, that Chakwas knew, that she knew it was petty. She didn't care. She didn't want anything to do with the doctor. Doctors were bad news, she'd known that since Mindoir, and there wasn't anything that would change her mind. Still, she could see the bottle out of the corner of her eye, and the doctor didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave her alone. What was the harm in sharing a beer with her?

She wasn't a shrink.

She wasn't in her office.

The worst she could do is call Shepard unfit for duty. That seemed unlikely.

Thinking about it, it was more likely that she would take Lillith's repeated insistence on fixing the same wire as a mark of insanity and have her sent back to the Alliance shrink.

With a sigh, Shepard put her tools down, leaned back in her chair again and used the edge of the table to take the cap off the bottle.

"Thanks," she said, tilting the bottle slightly toward the doctor.

"It's my pleasure. It's the least I can do for one of the few members of the ground team to not continually grace my medbay."

"Engineers aren't exactly front line soldiers," Shepard answered.

"Neither are snipers, but if you knew the number of times Kingsley has ended up on my table you would think they were."

Shepard grunted her agreement. "I'm not fond of hospitals," she finally said.

"Nor doctors, from what I gather," Chakwas laughed, placing her now empty bottle on the table. Unless you're bleeding everywhere, or have a head wound, I'm not going to try to keep you in medical. I do like to know my patients, though, and that's usually easier to do before they end up unconscious on my table."

Shepard stared at the label on the bottle for a long time, then drained what was left in it. "I don't want anyone to know me."

"You are doing a great job of making sure that happens. I can be persistent when I want to be, though. I'd rather learn about you, from you, than from your files."

"I do my job. I do it well. I've been cleared at every physical. What in the universe could you learn from me that could possibly help you patch me up if I got shot?"

"More than you know," Chakwas answered, "I have a couple more of these stashed away. Another?"

"No. I need a clear head for this," Lillith said, nodding down at the disassembled drone. "Answer my question."

Chakwas grinned and shrugged, "There are certain anesthesias and pain killers that can cause mood changes in the short term. They may work better, but if a patient is already of a certain personality, it might be wiser, and better for them, to use something different, to avoid the possible side effects. It's nothing that would prevent their use, but as a doctor it's my responsibility to not only heal my patients, but to make sure they are comfortable with their treatment."

Lillth grunted quietly, considering. She could understand that, she supposed. She felt much more comfortable going into a fight knowing the layout of the area, and who she was fighting, rather than going in blind. She remembered her father, when they had a sick animal, before he called the vet, would track what the animal had eaten, where it had been, and who had had contact with it. He also kept all the genetic records for the animals, going back generations before they'd first bought them from Earth.

"_The more information the vet has, Lilly," _he had said, "_the better she'll be able to find out what's wrong. Did her mom have a history of intestinal problems? Is she normally docile and just recently become aggressive? All of that matters, sweetheart. To me, so I know if I need to call Doc Jennings, to you, so you know if you need to get me, and to the doc, so she knows how to treat her. Never forget that, baby. Knowledge saves lives, keeps this farm going."_

Knowledge hadn't saved her father. Knowledge hadn't saved the colony. But knowledge had saved her own life on the battlefield more than once. It had saved the people in her team. And maybe, just maybe, if someone had known the batarians were coming, things might have turned out different.

She sighed and flicked the wire she'd been messing with earlier. There was a buzz and the drone appeared over Chakwas' shoulder. The older woman jumped slightly, and Lillith laughed, shutting the command off.

"All right doctor, go grab those beers. What do you want to know?"

**edited because apparently I was drunk the last time I did**


	12. You've Come A Long Way, Kid

**OMG, what is this? Two updates, just days apart? What am I thinking?! Don't get used to it...I was bored at work. :)**

"Most days it seems that it was just yesterday that I sat out there. Dress blues freshly pressed, shoes shined until I could see my face in them. And butterflies so big waging war in my stomach, it felt like the First Contact War. That day I was the first to officially complete N7 training. That day, I was the first to have made it so far into special operations that I could tell everyone I was a covert agent. After years of hiding in shadows, I'd have it plastered on every uniform, every chest piece.

"That day I was one of four to achieve this recognition. That day, so people tell me, I made history. That day I was just glad I didn't get sick all over those freshly shined shoes.

"This day, the six of you receive that recognition. This day you make history. This day, I give you permission to get sick all you want - just try and avoid me, if you please.

"It's been a long, hard road. Some of you have seen classmates die. All of you have seen them drop to the wayside, most of them never even passing the entrance exam. But you made it. There aren't many of you, and though you wear your designations proudly, most will look right past you. And that will be their last mistake. You are the best of the best. A team of elite soldier culled from elite soldiers.

"I have no doubt that all of you, in your own ways, will change the galaxy. Now, who's hungry?"

The chuckles, that had never really died down even during the most somber parts of Anderson's speech rose up again. There was a shuffling of chairs and murmured conversation as the six graduates, their friends and family, all rose together to shuffle jovially toward the buffet. Hugs were exchanged, handshakes with important generals. And in the corner, eyes plastered on the door, sat Lillith Shepard.

When Anderson had come to her on the Tokyo and told her that the results of her final spec ops training - a month she'd taken off at his insistence- had come in, she had known she had passed. She'd known she had passed before the results had even been tallied. It had been close, that final test, and she'd only been on top by a hair, but she had still been on top. The official, stamped letter that announced that she was now N7, and would be recognized, with those from other classes over the last year, had also included instructions on how to invite family.

She had stared a long time at that. She had no real friends. She and Dr. Chakwas had come to a mutual understanding, and occasionally met to have drink, but that was the closest she got. Anderson, she supposed, she might call a friend if she was hard pressed, but he was the keynote speaker, and her commanding officer to boot.

Her family was dead. Her parents killed so many years ago that there were days when she thought she might forget their faces. And in the process of losing them, she had also lost Clara. She hadn't exchanged more than four words with her since the day of her hearing about Torfan. She sent her a birthday card every year, but the last one had been sent back to her. Clara, now twenty, no longer lived on campus.

She hadn't tried to find her sister's new address. She hadn't seen the point. Clara never sent a reply. She never answered the few calls Lillith had attempted to make. Not that Lillith ever left a message when she called. Except this last time.

She had called the school to get Clara's new address and her number. For all that she had tried to cut ties, Lillith was still her sister's emergency contact, and the information had been handed over with little ceremony. It had taken all her willpower to finally send the invitation. The paper it was printed on reminded Lillith of the letter Clara had received all those years ago. A lifetime ago. Paper unseen in most parts of the galaxy, thick and coarse; the fold lines carefully creased by hand. She had finally forced it into the hands of a clerk on Arcturus when they had docked to resupply, without much hope that her sister would ever receive it, let alone open it.

It had been another week before Lillith had worked up the courage to call. She felt a child again, staring at her omnitool, her sister's number flashing at her. She had told herself, over and over again, that their separation was a good thing. That she was better off not having to worry about her baby sister. And her sister was certainly better off without her. She had known that since she was sixteen and she had so horribly failed her family.

Clara hadn't answered that one either. But after breathing at the recording for a long minute Lillith had finally barked out, "I'd really like it if you could come to my N7 graduation. But I get it if you can't. Love ya, sis.", before quickly ending the call. Clara hadn't called back.

Still, Lillith continued to sit next to the empty seat at her table, Clara's name carefully written in a curling script. So long aboard ship, where everything was an electronic display, and nothing ever handwritten, left Lillith almost unable to read her sister's name. But it was there, and while the other graduates mingled with their families, and exchanged stories, Lillith sat in silence.

It didn't bother her, the way she knew it bothered others. She was used to being alone in a crowd, liked being alone in a crowd.

Though alone, though staring intently at the double door leading into the banquet hall, Lillith certainly didn't look uncomfortable. She didn't feel uncomfortable. She had no desire to socialize, no desire to force her company on those she knew didn't want it. There was a tinge of guilt that she had tried to do that with Clara. That the card, and the phone call had both been too much. Clara wanted her gone from her life. It seemed only right that she give her sister that, when she'd been unable to give her so many other things.

"Commander."

Lillith tuned out the voice.

"Commander."

She wished whoever the woman was trying to get a hold of would just answer her already.

"Command Lillith Shepard are you ignoring me on purpose?"

Lillith turned from the door, and stared blankly at the woman standing in front of her. Her recent promotion, just hours before, hadn't even registered with her yet. The sight of Commander Riley was just as strange. And that the woman who had once led her away from what Shepard had thought was the end of her career to N6 training knew about her new rank - when her dress blues still held only the bars for First Lieutenant - left her even more confused.

Riley slipped into Clara's chair and grinned. "You beat me to it," she said, raising her wine glass.

"I'm sorry?' She'd met this woman all of once. They had shared a shuttle ride to Earth, which, admittedly, had been a very long one, but that was all. Regardless, however, she didn't know her from Eve, and didn't particularly want to.

"N7. Our classmates have been taking bets. You and I...I had the highest odds of beating you to N7. You beat me. Lost me 300 credits in the process too, just so you know."

Brilliant, she was drunk. Shepard wasn't one to turn her nose up at free booze, but she knew her limits and she stuck to them. She never understood why no one else seemed capable of that when they got in crowds.

"I'm sorry?" she said, wondering how best to get away. Or at least get Riley out of her sister's seat. Sure, Clara wasn't showing up, but she didn't particularly want Riley as a table companion either.

"Is it true what they say?" Riley asked, leaning into Lillith personal space. Her breath smelled like expensive wine and cheap scotch. It smelled a bit like vinegar, with a touch of potpourri. It made Lillith's stomach turn.

"I'm not sure what you're talking about." She turned back to the door. It was clear Clara wasn't coming, but she'd keep her vigil anyway.

"They say," Riley said, her words slurring, "that you're a good person to go to if someone's looking for company." Riley slid the hand not holding her wine glass along Lillith thigh.

Lillith turned, her nose curling slightly. Sure, she took a few more people to her bed than was generally socially acceptable, but what of it? They were always willing, and it was certainly better than the way certain other crew members handled stress. Bottling it all up inside, saving it for some mythical 'true love' was ridiculous. Sex and love were not synonyms. And sex was safer than a fist fight.

"Are you calling me a whore?" Lillith asked, more amused than angry.

"What? No! I just thought, you know. Maybe we could get out of here. There's an actual bar two floors down. Enlisted, sure, but the atmosphere is better."

"No, thank you." Lillith still hadn't turned to look at Riley again, and the older woman still had her hand on her thigh.

"We can go somewhere private then, somewhere quiet." The hand worked its way higher, Riley tracing the inner seam of Lillith's pants.

Another day, another time, and with a sober partner, Lillith might have been interested. As it was, she had standards, and Riley was much too far gone.

"I'm going to call you a cab," Lillith said, bringing up her omni.

"Don't," Riley whispered, her voice husky, but still smelling of sour booze. She put her wine on the table, and pulled Lillith to her, their lips meeting in a sloppy, drunken, kiss.

Lillith pushed her away, and held her at arms length. "What the hell?"

"You know you want this," Riley whispered, eyes darting quickly around the room before she unsnapped the button of Lillith's pants. Shepard pushed her hands away, almost violently, and redid the button.

"Commander, you are drunk. I'm sorry about the credits, but maybe next time you'll try harder. Now lets get you out of here."

"Only if you come with me," Riley said, leaning heavily against Shepard as the younger woman got to her feet.

"Whatever," Lillith said, noticing that a large part of the room was now looking at them. She smiled at them, and rolled her eyes at the way they blushed and turned away. Let them think what they would. She'd never say no to a sober lay, and Riley certainly wasn't unattractive, but the woman couldn't barely walk on her own. How she'd made it from across the room to come sit beside Shepard, she'd never know. That's what she got for not paying attention to her surroundings, she supposed.

She knew better than that.

As she moved toward the door, she saw Anderson break away from a group of parents and head toward her. The man sometimes had the funniest morals for a career military man. She ignored him, though, and called the first skycab company that her search brought up.

"Blacktop Skycab, what is your location?"

"Um, I need a cab to pick someone up at the Alliance banquet hall...I don't know the address."

"Your name?"

"Lieutenant S- Lieutenant Commander Shepard. The cab isn't for me."

"Omni-number."

"Seriously? How old is your system? That doesn't come up automatically?"

"Your Omni-number ma'am, please."

"51889ALI335. Loo-"

"Thank you, passengers name?"

Lillith rolled her eyes as she settled Riley onto a bench outside. Riley buried her nose in her stomach, and made a sleepy-purring noise in the back of her throat. Shepard closed her eyes, and sighed. Seriously, this woman needed to learn to lay off alcohol, or something.

"Lieutenant Commander Riley, but, you can charge it to the Alliance account. Inebriated officer."

There was a smirk in the operators voice when she spoke again, "Of course ma;'am. Any other passengers?"

"No, just her."

"The cab will be there in about ten minutes, thank you for using Blacktop Skycab."

"Don't you want to know where you're taking her?" Lillith snapped. Apparently, incompetence existed outside Alliance channels as well. She sometimes wondered why the human race had ever crawled out from the depth of the ocean. Or how. In her experience it took three people to come up with an idea, a dozen to vote on it, and a hundred more to come up with reasons why it couldn't be done before a plan was finally scrapped. That humanity had ever made it into space, let alone colonized worlds and made a name for itself in the galactic community never ceased to amaze her.

"Oh, yes. Of course."

"It generally helps to have an idea of where you're going when you pick someone up to take them home, don't you think?"

"Yes. I, yes, what is the address?"

It suddenly dawned on Shepard that she had no idea where Riley was staying. She'd mentioned the bar downstairs, but that didn't mean she was staying at the hotel the banquet hall was attached to. Normally, she'd have sent the cab to her own rooms at Alliance base, ones assigned for the duration of the Tokyo's stay in orbit before Anderson left to look at to look at some top secret project currently station at Arcturus. He'd put off his trip there specifically to speak at this graduation, and he'd only agreed after forcing her to agree to attend. Shepard had every intention of going back there herself at the end of the night, and she wasn't about to try and fend off the drunken Commander a second time.

"Alliance south dorms, the man at the gate will take charge of her."

The south dorms always had at least a few vacant rooms, in Shepard's experience, not that she had much on earth. And, at the very worst, she and Bryson, who she was fairly certain on gate duty tonight, had a history, and he would be able to find Riley a cot in a corner if nothing else.

"Thank you ma'am. The driver is o-" Lillith hung up before the woman could finish speaking. Riley, who she had assumed had fallen asleep leaning against her abdomen, was awake again, but obviously hadn't sobered up any, if the way her hands were trailing over the back of her legs was any indication.

Lillith pulled her hands away, and attempted to get Riley to lay down on the concrete bench. There was a reason she and Riley had been so hotly contested as to who would achieve the honor first - Lillith had been well aware of the bet, and had made over a thousand credits in the pool- and though drunk, Riley put up quite a struggle and almost succeed in wresting herself away from Shepard's grasp.

Shepard had just gotten Riley to stop fighting her by letting the woman lay with her head in her lap, when Anderson stepped out into the landing.

"Shepard," he said, his tone clearly disapproving. He was a stickler about the regs, and had an even dimmer view of people who took advantage of drunk soldiers.

"Sir," she answered, moving Rileys hand from between her thighs, again. Of all the great medical achievements, and no one had ever discovered a pill to make someone instantly sober without damaging side effects. It was disheartening.

"She's not under my command, and I won't stop you, but I do hope you know what you're getting yourself into."

"I'm not getting myself into anything, sir," she said as the skycab descended. "Would you mind helping me get her inside?"

Anderson moved slowly, and eyed her critically. He knew her worth, and he knew her reputation. Lillith was sure he was weighing the two as he helped Riley to her feet. He stepped back, waiting for Shepard to climb in after her, and she saw the surprise that flickered almost imperceptibly over his features when she didn't.

She leaned up next to the driver, gave him the Alliance safe driver account information, and told him the address again. He nodded, and she stepped away, watching the car life out of sight.

"Is she an old friend?" Anderson asked once the cab was out of sight.

"I met her once, right after Torfan. But apparently I made her lose a bet today. I figured getting her home was the least I could do."

"No one would have questioned if you went home with her," he said.

"Except you."

"Except me. You've come along way, kid."

"Thank you, sir. I think...I think I'm going to go have a drink downstairs."

"Don't do anything I would Shepard, we leave at 0900 tomorrow."

She nodded, once, briskly, then headed for the elevator. It was at three in the morning, when she stumbled into her room, a young woman, who had at least been relatively sober at the beginning of the night, and looked, at least at first glace, like Riley, on her arm, that she suddenly remembered that she had been waiting for Clara.

And that she had never shown up.


	13. New Beginings

**EDIT: Fixed the Adam plot hole. Also, there has been some concern that this is going to be Shepard/Kaidan. It's not. It will have bits of, in no particular order: Shep/Kaidan, Shep/Garrus, Shep/Thane, Shep/Liara,, a hinting of Shep/Ashley, and finally a whole lot of Shepard/Jack waaaaay down the road. Kaykay**

A voice came out over the loudspeaker, announcing that the ship departing for Mindoir was now boarding. Lillith leaned against the bulkhead and watched people slowly shuffle for the gate. She was due on the far side of the station, well away from this tourist haven, this temple to the civilian. The public areas of Arcturus were, in comparison to the military quarters in the back, and the Parliament chambers on the lower decks, extravagant, posh, and gaudy. Advertisements lined the walls, shops displayed their brightest merchandise, all proudly displaying the Alliance flag, in clear fronts, the less expensive travel necessities spilling out into the walkways.

Normally, Lillith didn't like it here. She didn't like the constant noise and the endless parade of people who took for granted everything she worked so hard to give them. She didn't like that they recognized her. Shouts of 'The Butcher' as common as requests for autographs, and tales of her daring adventures. She tried very hard not to laugh at the latter. She didn't think she'd ever had a daring adventure. Her entire life, since she'd turned sixteen, had been a long, desperate struggle just to stay alive. Today, though, things were different. Today, she'd much rather be among this crowd, carefree and oblivious. She'd found a home on the Tokyo over the last couple of years. She found something close to a friend in Chakwas, and a sense of security in knowing that the crew of that ship wasn't going to suddenly take off. She wouldn't be losing another family.

She glanced down at the patch affixed to her canvas jacket. The N7 on her chest glared back at her; laughed at her. Two weeks before she'd been excited. Happy. Clara had called her, apologized for not being able to make it, and even if she hadn't sounded sincere, Lillith had accepted it gladly. Anderson had brought them to Arcturus, given them a few days shore leave, and then gone to take a look at whatever project they'd come here for. She'd gone to Benning, lost a substantial amount of credits at an underground poker ring, then returned to find her life flipped upside down, again.

Anderson was leaving the Tokyo. Some imbecile captain that probably got his promotion by sleeping with an admiral was taking over. Chakwas was leaving with Anderson. And Lillith was going to be stuck...stuck with an entirely new crew and having to retrain them all on how to be a productive member of the Alliance. It had taken her six months before, and Anderson's crew had been fairly competent, mostly.

The only crew member staying on the Tokyo, besides Shepard herself, was the overly chipper pilot. Lillith rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes and watched a family of five pass their boarding passes to the tall blond man working the gate. In a blink her family was gone, again. In a blink, everything was turned on its head. In a blink, her life had taken a turn for the worst. She didn't understand it, she refused to accept it. Except, she had to. Anderson was taking a handful of crew members: Jenkins - who had only joined the Tokyo's crew a month prior - Chakwas, Smith-Gonzalez, Gregory, and taking over some top secret, classified project. She'd heard rumors about it, some sort of joint venture with the turians, or maybe the asari, she wasn't sure, but didn't have near high enough clearance to know all the details. And he was leaving her behind. Not sending her to to some new assignment, like most of the remaining crew, but leaving her on the Tokyo. Leaving her with a bunch of idiots who couldn't find their asses with both hands.

The Tokyo was due to depart in an hour or so. She'd been putting off going back to the ship. She knew she had to. She knew that regardless of what she wanted, it was what the brass wanted that mattered. But, she figured, that didn't mean she had to like it. She pushed off the bulkhead with a heavy sigh and shoved her hands in her pockets. She kept her face down, hoping she wouldn't be spotted on her walk out. A few people had noticed her standing where she had been, but a quick glare had sent them shuffling away. That didn't work as well when she was walking. They tended to walk with her, and not look at her face, not noticed that she really didn't want company. Didn't want to give autographs. She scratched at the scar above her eye, a present from a twelve year old batarian on Torfan, and slipped through the security check.

"Commander Shepard, aren't you supposed to be on the other side of the station?" the serviceman standing at the body scan asked.

"Tokyo's in bay 8," she answered curtly, uncomfortable with the slight buzz the scan caused in her head. Every time she passed through them it caused a ringing in her ears that would last for well over an hour. It was a fairly common reaction she'd been told, and over the years she'd just come to deal with it, but it put her in a sour mood nevertheless.

"Yeah, but the clearance briefing's in the lecture hall on deck 4." He held up a data pad and waggled it at her.

"That's well and good, but why would I need to be at a clearance briefing?"

He shrugged and tapped at the pad. "Why? I'm not sure, ma'am. But I've got your name on the list."

She sighed and looked at the pad that the serviceman held out. Sure enough, she was there, her name flashing to be signed in at a briefing on the far side of the station. Her name had been added just an hour before, which was why she hadn't heard of it until now. With a curse she sprinted back through the security scan and towards the lecture hall. She bypassed the elevator and took the stairs three at a time down to deck four. Anderson was waiting for her outside the open doors to the briefing.

"There you are Commander. They were about to start without you."

"I wasn't aware I was slated for the briefing. sir."

Anderson chuckled, "I can't very well have my XO not have clearance to know about the ship she's serving on, now can I?"

"Sir?"

"I've been trying to reach you for days," Anderson continued as they moved along the rows of seats. There were perhaps three dozen people scattered in the hundred plus chairs. Anderson slipped into a seat near the front and Shepard sat directly behind him. "There was a mix up with the paperwork." Shepard saw Jenkins come bounding down the walkway, followed by a dark haired marine, slightly baby faced with slicked back hair. He's eyes clearly told that he was fighting a massive headache. Jenkins sat by himself right up at the front, the other marine slipped into the seat across the aisle from Shepard. She smiled at him, letting her eyes drink him in for a moment.

"Paperwork, sir?" she asked, dragging her eyes away and turning her attention back to the captain.

"I'm not sure what happened, but your transfer got lost in the shuffle. Took some time to get it cleared up." Anderson stood, smiled at her. "Don't worry about it, soldier. Now you get to meet the Normandy."

* * *

The Normandy was beautiful. The sleek edges, the bright lights. She was easy on the eyes, and Shepard loved it. Loved that she was here, on this ship. And that Anderson had hand picked a crew that, at least from their records, seemed competent if not perfect. The Normandy was a technological marvel. She'd spent all morning sitting on the railing in engineering, just listening to the engine. It was so quiet.

Adams had gushed over the systems. He had been more than happy to let her poke around, something she'd done often indulged with with on the Tokyo. He'd given her the grand tour, finally letting slip that he, like Anderson, had been part of the project, at least distantly, since the design phases. She hadn't wanted to leave. There had been so much to learn from the drive core. She hadn't even had time to look at the stealth systems.

She strode back onto the ship, having spent the last hour in a debriefing about the turian spectre that would be joining them on the Normandy's maiden voyage. She ran a hand along the bulkhead as she made her way toward the bridge. It still felt strange that it was so small. There was no command chair, barely enough space for the four soldiers that were supposed to man it regularly. She stepped up behind the pilot - a flippant man who she felt would rub her the wrong way - but one that had proved himself more than once to be better than his peers. While she was certain she'd hate him, she was also certain that she could respect him.

The turian was there as well, as she approached. As she came up he turned and left without giving her so much as a passing glance. She kept her eyes out at the stars, even while the pilot bickered with the Lieutenant. It was hard to keep her eyes off him, the baby faced marine from the briefing the week before, but she managed. Anderson ran a tight ship, and she had no intention of breaking his rules over some pretty boy.

"Joker, status report," Anderson barked over the coms. She made a mental note of his call sign, having known a few pilots in her time They were touchy at best, the good ones more than most. And if his record was even half right, this Joker was one of the best.

It was rumored that Joker could enter a Mass Relay and determine where the ship would end up on the other side. That he was able to out maneuver turian fighters in a carrier. She doubted that that was really true, but it made a good story. And in the few days she had known him he had lived up to the hype. He was also fairly quick on the uptake. Ever since Anderson had told her that morning that the turian Spectre was coming aboard she'd known something was up, and this Joker had already sniffed it out as well. Baby-face seemed entirely too trusting.

She had never served on a new class of ship like this before, but common sense said that quick flybys on stable colonies didn't require the presence of a spectre. Some low level turian diplomat she could accept - this project had been heavily funded by the turian meritocracy - but a spectre? Spectre's were the left hand of the council, not some puppet of their home governments. They answered directly to the councilors. They were outside all normal chains of command. They were the sort of creatures that, as a child, she had believed only existed in storybooks.

She heard, through her distracted musing, Anderson ask her to meet him.

"Did'ya catch that, Commander?" Joker asked as the comm went dead.

"I'm to meet with the Captain and the spectre. If I'm not back in 30, make sure they don't send me to the stars in my dress blues. They itch." She turned on a heel before they could answer, and walked away to the sound of Joker's laughter. Maybe they might get along after all.

She returned Jenkins' salute and smiled at Chakwas. They were due a drink.

The spectre was alone staring at stock images of Eden Prime.

There was a video playing, and Shepard recognized it as the tourist bureau ad. Children ran through the streets of the colony. Farm equipment sat in the sun, animals grazed. A couple, dressed in white, sipped lemonade on a bed and breakfast's porch. Shepard shook her head as she watched it. If the equipment was ever left out like that, the elements would soon destroy it. Thousands of dollars down the drain because some farmer was too lazy to take their tractor back to the barn. It made pretty picture for a laid back vacation though. She didn't know much about Eden Prime. It was older than Mindoir, though not my much. They seemed to be doing well, and in her time with the Alliance, Shepard had never had to stop by the colony for anything other than relief work for natural disasters.

"Ah Commander. There are you are. I was hoping to speak with you in private," the turian told her. Nivilus? Nakus? Nihlus? That was it, Nihlus.

"Captain Anderson said he would meet me here. It's probably best to wait for him. I'd hate for you to have to repeat yourself." She knew she was overstepping a bit, but she kept her voice light. She's long ago learned to mask intended offense with a polite tone.

"How much do you know about this colony we are heading to?" he asked, ignoring her.

"Not much," she answered, forced into playing his games, "it's fairly stable. On the smaller side for a colony of its age. It was the first successful attempt by us to colonize another world. I hear there's a place in the main colony that makes a mean brisket."

"Beyond all that, you humans like to raise it up as proof of your success. Of your ingenuity. Of your ability to colonize and protect. You were in the colony on Mindoir when it was attacked by batarian slavers twelves years ago, were you not?"

The smell of blood. The cries of the slaughtered. They rang in her ears. She hadn't had this reaction to watching the transport the week before. Hadn't connected herself to the happy families that were on their way to the rebuilt colony world. Had stopped thinking of the planet as home long ago. Her shoulder began to ache and she rolled it, unable to find the words to answer the spectre. "I was," she finally blurted out, and the act of speaking washed the memories away. "Is that some lame attempt at a threat?"

Nihlus was saved from answering by Anderson's arrival. The captain glanced between his XO and the spectre and closed his eyes. Lillith watched him take a deep breath, and felt the desire to slip into the shadows. It was a reaction she hadn't felt since Torfan, when she'd been called before the admirals. She gathered all her emotions together, again, and pushed them away. Locked them away. The excitement of this ship, of the upcoming tour, had caused her to loosen her reign on them, and she was paying the price as she always did.

"What did you want to speak to me about, sir?" she asked, her voice once again devoid of the turmoil that raged within her, though now only in a small corner of her mind.

"This isn't a simple shakedown run, Shepard," Anderson said, and Lillith almost rolled her eyes.

"I had sort of gathered that, sir. Turian Spectre, full crew. Why couldn't you tell me?" She shoved the hurt at not being told before away with all the other emotions.

"I'm telling you now, Commander. Things weren't finalized until just before we left dock."

"Yes, sir. Why are we going to Eden Prime, then?"

He began to explain. The Prothean artifact, this beacon. It's ability to change the course of human history. Of galactic history. She cast a sideways glance at Nihlus while Anderson spoke, curious as to why they'd let the council in on the secret before they'd at least done some basic tests themselves, but she kept her mouth shut. Anderson was the closest thing she had to a father, but he was still her commanding officer.

Anderson had just started in on mission details. Shepard would take Jenkins and Alenko, Baby-face if Lillith remembered correctly, secure the beacon for transport, and they'd be on their way to the citadel by dinner bell. In all her years with the Alliance, Shepard had never set foot on the space station that was the heart of galactic government, and she had no real desire to. Before she could ask if she'd be overseeing the transfer at the other end, Joker cut in.

"Captain, we're receiving an emergency broadcast from the 212 stationed on Eden Prime. Video and audio are patchy."

"Send it back here, Joker," Anderson answered, taking a step towards the screen despite it still being black.

Static took over before the image resolved. Lillith took a half step away. The sky was red, either from the early dawn or from the attack. Soldiers ran, chaotic, screaming at their cameras. Gun fire crackled in the background. As she watched sd something stabbed the soldier through the chest. She'd been involved in many ground fight. She'd see more than her share of death. What she saw on the screen wasn't a battle though, it was a massacre. The soldier's helmet came off, and the camera rolled with it, across blood stained grass.

It caught a brief view of something in the sky. A creature, perhaps? No, it was too big. A ship? She didn't know anything about the local fauna or technology.

"What was that?" she asked, leaning forward.

They reset the transmission, stopping it on the brief second where the thing was in frame. It was monstrous. It looked like some massive sea monster, descending from the heavens. Bile rose in her throat at the sight.

She had never had such a strong reaction to something unknown before. There had been many a time when something that others had thought was dangerous had turned out to be nothing more that faulty wire in a VI.

This, though. This was evil. Even through the transmission she could feel it radiating. There was nothing good about whatever that was, and every part of her that wasn't trained soldier wanted to run away and hide.

"Suit up, Commander. Grab Alenko and Jenkins. You hit the ground in twenty."

"Aye, aye, sir," she answered, backing out of the room, her eyes still plastered to the screen.


End file.
